Andhra Pradesh - Tirupati   

‘Population studies in fringes’

—Photo: K. V. Poornachandra Kumar

Token gesture: UNFPA Country Representative Nesim Tumkaya being felicitated by IASP president Arvind Pandey at a conference in Tirupati on Tuesday.

TIRUPATI: Dr. Nesim Tumkaya, UNFPA Representative for India and Bhutan on Tuesday underlined the need to further enrich, broaden and deepen the scope for studies on population science, which he said, still remained on the fringes in many parts of the world. Steps must be taken to mainstream the involvement of population professionals in the national labour market, he said in his keynote address at the 31st Annual Conference of the Indian Association for the Study of Population (IASP) which got underway at S.V. University, Tirupati on Tuesday.

UNFPA — United Nations Population Fund, is an international development agency that promotes the right of every woman, man and child to enjoy a life of health and equal opportunity.

Nesim Tumkaya in his address focused on two aspects: scope of population science as a discipline and the contribution of population scientists to the national economy. Admitting that population numbers alone were dry and boring, he said that if they were combined with the people’s health, education, employment, income, land holdings, housing, food intake etc, they would become so interesting that they would enter squarely into the development arena, benefiting both individual and the nation, besides ensuring business progress.

The IASP president, Arvind Pandey in his address expressed concern over the increasing proportions of old and very old in India’s demographic spectrum with potential to increase further in the not too distant future. He said India which is in the third stage of demographic transition has to find a way to deal with the dual burden of diseases because infectious diseases would kill a disproportionate number of children, especially among the poor. At the same time, India is beginning to suffer from the chronic, lifestyle diseases of the ‘more developed nations’.

Prof. M. Ubaidullah, Head, Department of Pupulation Studies, SVU which is co-sponsoring the meet along with IASP welcomed.

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