'Big is Beautiful' catchword of Russian Govt. to check population decline

Moscow, Sep 4 (ANI): "Big is Beautiful" seems to be the new catchword of the Russian Government that is struggling hard to overcome their scanty population, which will go down to 111 million by 2050 from 141 million at present.

Russia's population peaked in the early 1990s (at the time of the end of the Soviet Union) with about 148 million people in the country. The United States Census Bureau estimates that Russia's population will decline from the current 143 million to a mere 111 million by 2050, a loss of more than 30 million people and a decrease of more than 20 percent.

The primary causes of Russia's population decrease and loss of about 7-8 lakh people each year are due to a high death rate, low birth rate, high rate of abortions, and a low level of immigration.

To boost the psyche of having more and more children, the government here has unravelled an all out programme to convince the young couples to have more and more kids.

Hoardings with slogans written on it like "Big is Beautiful" have been put all around the city. Besides this the government has decided to give Rs.5 lakh to those young people who keep on increasing their family size.

Not only this, the enterprising couples are called in the coveted Kremlin Palace where the Russian President himself gives medal to kids-producing couples.

For every kid, the couple is given one medal. Besides, the couple having more than six-seven kids is given all sorts of facilities and preferences in government jobs.

After the disintegration of USSR, the sense of insecurity enveloped the middle class and this compelled the couple to keep their family size within the financial capacity of the family.

The declining economy and shrinking job opportunities have also proved detrimental in increasing the size of their family by Russians.

One senior journalist said: "The migration from rural areas has also reached an all time high. Rural people who came to urban areas in search of job had also to follow the same rule contrary to the age-old belief of to have a comparatively bigger family."

At present the total population of Russia is 14.1 crore which by all means is very low. And the government has decided to take all steps to convince people to increase their family size and rest all requirements will be taken care by the government. By Pankaj Choudhary (ANI)