Social issues in India

Since independence in 1947, India has faced multiple social and economic issues.

The population of India is an estimated 1.34 billion. Though India ranks second in population, it ranks 33 in population density. Indira Gandhi,then Prime Minister of India, had implemented a forced sterilisation programme in the early 1970s but the programme failed. Officially, men with two children or more were required to be sterilised, but many unmarried young men, political opponents and ignorant, poor men were also believed to have been affected by this programme. This programme is still remembered and regretted in India, and is blamed for creating a public aversion to family planning, which hampered Government programmes for decades. One of the reasons the population has increased is that a dip in the rate of infant mortality has not been accompanied by a corresponding fall in the birth rate.

India suffers from substantial poverty. In 2012, the Indian government stated 21.9% of its population is below its official poverty limit. The World Bank, in 2011 based on 2005's PPPs International Comparison Program, estimated 23.6% of Indian population, or about 276 million people, lived below $1.25 per day on purchasing power parity. According to United Nation's Millennium Development Goal (MDG) programme 270 millions or 21.9% people out of 1.2 billion of Indians lived below poverty line of $1.25 in 2011-2012 as compare to 41.6% in 2004-05.

Official figures estimate that 27.5% of Indians lived below the national poverty line in 2004–2005. A 2007 report by the state-run National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector (NCEUS) found that 25% of Indians, or 236 million people, lived on less than 20 rupees per day with most working in "informal labour sector with no job or social security, living in abject poverty."Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India in 1971 election campaign gave the slogan garibi hatao desh bachao but it helped little to the cause of poverty eradication in India. It was part of the 5th Five-Year Plan.in 2016 according to the latest poll..India is even behind Bangladesh in order to poverty rate.

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