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This article provides information about the consequences of development on ecology and environment:
The environmental consequences, the use of pesticides, chemical fertilizers and hybrid seeds have had a negative effect on the soil quality. In fact, commercial agriculture and the over utilisation of ground water has created conditions of drought all over India. The environmental crisis has put even the tried and tested route to development of the modern and advanced countries to question.
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The construction of large dams, monoculture plantations and commercial agriculture have not only created conditions of poverty, but also questioned the explicit faith in the dominant ideas of progress and development to bring about the appropriate demographic changes.
The overexploitation of the environment has put a large section of the world population at risk. Millions of persons have lost their livelihoods, face severe health risks, and have been forced to migrate to the already overpopulated cities in search of alternative employment. The indigenous peoples across the world or tribes, as they are known in India, have collectively campaigned against the destruction of their natural habitats, which has cut into their source of livelihood and forced them to migrate in search of employment.
Studies on fertility and poverty reveal the complex relationship between poverty and the tendency to have more children. For one, unlike the neo- Malthusian belief, children are not viewed as liabilities but as assets. The motivation to have more children varies from class to class. Landless labourers, who depend on manual labour, and the poor farmers, who cannot afford mechanised alternatives to manual labour, prefer to have more children. Overpopulation then is not the cause of poverty, but perhaps or at the most a symptom. This is to say that having more children is not the reason for their impoverishment, but is a calculated, rational economic decision on their part.
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According to the ILO statistics, 1995, there are 250 million children in the age group of 4-14 years working for a living and 50% of them are employed full time. The World Development Report, 1984 further supports this argument through its findings in Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia and Turkey; children here are considered as investments, as persons who would take care of their parents in the future.
This heavy reliance on children also demonstrates the absence and poor performance of other forms of institutional support structures and welfare programmes in the developing world. Clearly a unidirectional focus on population cannot explain or ‘cure’ poverty and its persistence in the developing world.