The need to stabilise population and accelerate the pace of development was strongly emphasised at a conference in New Delhi on Thursday. Stating that our future is dependent on it, the Vice-President Mohd. Hamid Ansari said that harmonising population and development will shape the destiny of India as a happy and prosperous country. He was speaking at a workshop on “Population and Development” organised by the Indian Parliamentary Group in New Delhi on Thursday. Mohd. Ansari also said that it is essential to involve especially the women and youth in the efforts to control population growth.Expressing concern that early and child marriage are still rampant in the country, Hamid Ansari said that lack of information, inadequate access to methods of family planning and the prevailing cultural taboos on open discussion on these issues have contributed to population explosion and increase in maternal and infant mortality. Speaking on the occasion, the Lok Sabha Speaker Mrs. Meira Kumar said that the rational approach to address the twin concerns of population and development is to slow down population growth and increase public investment in education, health and other related sectors. Mrs. Meira Kumar also said that education and informed choice for women with regard reproductive health is the most important step to check the undesirable population growth and also to bring about socio-economic development. Mrs. Kumar emphasised that it is the primary responsibility of the government to take initiatives to improve the existing strategies and programmes to stabilise population.AIR correspondent says that sixteen million people are added every year to the population in India. The larger proportion of increase is from states like Bihar, Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.