It’s an issue that's too sensitive for our political bosses to resolve. Late prime minister Mrs Indira Gandhi tried her hand on it and made a little progress. But corporate India is taking some steps to challenge and take on the issue of a population stabilisation. The Indian population is growing at such a rapid pace that its momentum threatens the growth and development of India. It now stands at little over one billion.

The Indian corporate sector has come forward to launch an initiative entitled 'Population First' - a sustainable human development programme with a focus on health and family welfare issues and aims to work with Central government and state governments to help achieve the goal of population stabilisation by 2045, as enunciated in the National Population Policy 2000.

The initiative 'Population First' was launched on October 7, with the formation of a trust under Population First. The board of trustees and founder members of the trust include eminent Indian corporate heads like Keshub Mahindra, Ratan Tata, Deepak Parekh, Jamshyd Godrej, MS Swaminathan, Tejendra Khanna, Begum Bikees Latif and Bobby Sista. In addition to the board of trustees, the programme has an active advisory council which is headed by Dr JJ Irani, former managing director of Tata Steel, and comprises eminent personalities like Ms Rajashree Birla, director, Aditya Birla Group. 

Population First board chairman Keshub Mahindra, in his address at a function on Monday, said, "For India to achieve its objective of being a true economic superpower — with equitable distribution of wealth, eradication of poverty, generation of gainful employment and controlled usage of our scarce resources — the first and for most problem that need to be tackled is that of over population."

He added that as the beneficiaries of the government policy, the corporate sector needs to step in and help the government achieve these objectives.

Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata said, "For us, more important than long-term stabilisation goal, is the goal of sensitisation. By sensitisation, I mean that every sector of our society from government to bureaucracy to media to private sector to common man, needs to comprehend the immensity of the problem of population and actually chip-in, in their own way, to stop the impending calamity. Then, and only then, can we be a truly progressive nation."