Social barriers in Indian Society :

 In the midst of political uncertainty and communal fury over the past decade, and particularly in the last few years, the problem of population explosion has been relegated to the background. Neither the social scientists nor the political parties or the government seem to think it necessary to focus attention upon what is surely the most crucial single problem facing the nation. There is no dearth of studies and views of the scholars to highlight the fact that India is falling behind in the race for economic development mainly because it has not shown much progress in controlling the population growth.

The nation’s potential for achieving the set goals is handicapped by an explosion in our population. About 46,500 persons are added to our existing population every day, or 17 million persons every year, or 170 million people in a decade. It has been calculated, that for every addition of about 165 lakh people in our country, we will require every year 5 lakh tons cereals, 2.5 million houses, 1.5 lakh primary and secondary schools, 5,000 hospitals and dispensaries, 2,000 primary health centers, 2 lakh hospital beds, and 50 thousand doctors. The large population thus checks our efforts to contain poverty and bring about rapid development.

One of the main causes of this Population Explosion is directly related to the countries high literacy rate. Family planning has a direct link with female education, and female education is directly associated with age at marriage, the general status of women, their fertility behavior, infant mortality rate, and so forth. According to the preliminary estimates of the 2020 census, the overall literacy percentage in India is 72.11 as compared to 43.56 ten years ago. The male literacy percentage is 83.86 while the female literacy percentage is 69.42 (The Hindustan Times, March 26, 2020). Education makes a person liberal, broad-minded, open to new ideas, and rational. If both men and women are educated, they will easily understand the logic of planning their family, but if either of them or both of them are illiterate, they would be more orthodox, illogical, and religious-minded. This is evident from the fact that Kerala which has an overall literacy rate of 94.59% and a female literacy rate of 74.8% has the lowest birth rate (22.4 per thousand) while Rajasthan's appallingly low female literacy rate of 20.84% gives rise to the third highest birth rate in the country (36.4%), the highest having been registered in Uttar Pradesh (37.5%) followed by Madhya Pradesh (37 1%). These statistical figures hold good for most of the other states too.

The religiously orthodox and conservative people are against the use of family planning measures. There are women who disfavor family planning on the plea that they cannot go against the wishes of God. There are some women who argue that the purpose of a woman's life is to bear children. Other women adopt a passive attitude: "If I am destined to have many children, I will have them. If not, I will not have them. Why should I bother about it ".

It may be concluded that as regards the direction of social change in India is concerned, there has been considerable cultural continuity along with change based on imbibing modern values, practices, and institutions. Traditional patterns have not been held static and modern behavior is commonly fitted into long-standing patterns of action.