Population Dynamics, Environment and Quality of Life in North-east India

The growth in population beyond the optimal size associated by socio-political development and technical revolution results in increased pressure on natural environment as well as on the process of economic development. In order to achieve a better quality of life, care has to be taken to obtain smooth movement in all the systems and sub systems connected with quality of living. The change in the total environment system stimulates a new pattern of population dynamics that moves in its own cycle to alter the system factor of the quality of life. Therefore, uniform velocity in the same direction in all the sub-systems is a necessary condition to prevent disorderliness or malfunctioning in the total system of quality of life. Population dynamics in the North East India as in other societies and regions has two basic components: dynamics through natural process and dynamics through induced process. As regarding to the natural growth rate of population during the period of 1971-2001, all the states in the region have registered higher growth rate than the rate for the whole country. As a result, the increasing population pressure in this region has given rise to linkages between quality of life, population dynamics and environmental degradation. It is against this background, the paper intends to provide an economic explanation to the emerged linkages among these three components. The paper documents a conceptual framework of quality of life; examines the causal explanation about the complexity of population dynamics and environment interconnections; illustrates the impact of population dynamics on the quality of life and on environment and constructs a case for setting guidelines for improving the quality of life in the region.