As India moves through the later stages of its demographic transition, the population questions that dominate public debate are changing. The old anxiety about sheer numbers is giving way to a new set of concerns — an ageing society, a stubbornly adverse sex ratio, the unfinished struggle against child and infant death, and the broad agenda of reproductive health. These are the emerging population issues, and each reveals how demographic patterns are entangled with gender, class and the quality of social provision. This note examines them in turn and draws out their sociological significance.
The ageing of Indian society
Falling fertility and rising life expectancy together produce population ageing — a growing share of people in the older age groups. India's elderly population is expanding rapidly in absolute terms and will accelerate as the large working-age cohorts of today grow old. Ageing raises the old-age dependency ratio and poses questions about pensions, healthcare and long-term care that a young country has never had to face at scale.
Sociologically, ageing intersects with the transformation of the family. The joint family that once absorbed care of the elderly is under strain from migration, nuclearisation and the entry of women into paid work. Older women are especially vulnerable, since they outlive men, are more likely to be widowed, and often lack independent income. Ageing is therefore not a uniform experience but one deeply structured by gender and class.
The sex ratio and its decline
The sex ratio — females per thousand males — has long been adverse in India, and the child sex ratio has in recent decades deteriorated further in several prosperous states. This is not a natural outcome but the product of son preference acting through neglect of girls and, increasingly, sex-selective abortion made possible by prenatal diagnostic technology. Amartya Sen's arresting notion of the missing women captures the demographic scale of this discrimination.
The paradox that some of the wealthiest regions show the worst child sex ratios shows that prosperity without gender justice deepens rather than dissolves the problem. Smaller families intensify the pressure to ensure that scarce children include a son. Legal responses such as the ban on prenatal sex determination have had limited effect against entrenched cultural preference, underscoring that the roots lie in kinship, inheritance and the devaluation of daughters.
Child and infant mortality
Infant mortality — deaths in the first year per thousand live births — and under-five mortality remain sensitive barometers of social wellbeing. India has reduced these rates substantially, yet they stay high relative to comparable economies and vary sharply by region, class, caste and the mother's education. Girl children in some settings face higher mortality than boys, reversing the biological norm and again exposing gender discrimination.
The determinants are overwhelmingly social — maternal nutrition and literacy, access to clean water and sanitation, immunisation coverage and the reach of primary health care. Reducing these deaths is thus less a medical than a developmental task, and progress tracks closely with the empowerment of women.
Reproductive health
The reproductive health agenda, crystallised at the Cairo Conference of 1994, reframes population policy around the wellbeing and rights of individuals rather than aggregate targets. It encompasses safe pregnancy and childbirth, access to contraception, the prevention and treatment of reproductive tract infections, and freedom from sexual violence and coercion. Maternal mortality, though much reduced, remains an indicator of how far this agenda is unmet, especially for poor and rural women.
A reproductive health approach insists that women are agents with rights, not instruments of demographic policy. It links contraception to autonomy, connects safe motherhood to the strength of the health system, and makes the case that lower fertility follows from empowerment rather than compulsion.
How to use this in the exam
Present these issues as the frontier of India's demography — the concerns of a maturing rather than a merely growing population. Weave a common thread through them: each is shaped decisively by gender and by the quality of social provision. Use signature concepts such as the missing women, the paradox of prosperous districts with the worst child sex ratios, and the Cairo shift to reproductive health to signal analytical depth. Conclude by arguing that ageing, sex ratios, mortality and reproductive health converge on a single prescription — investing in the education, health and autonomy of women — which ties the whole population syllabus together.