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July 2003 Edition India and a One-Child-Policy
Dr A.V. Ramana Kumar while examining India's population problem, stresses the seriousness of the issue. He suggests various policy reforms and also considers the possibility of a one-child norm being followed in India. Consequences
of over-population: One out of six people on this globe live in India; it occupies second place after China in population and is projected to cross China’s population with 1.5 billion people by 2040. India reached the billion mark at the turn of the century (almost three times of its 1951 population of 361 million). India's population density at 789 persons per square mile is one of the highest in the world (ten times the density of the United States). With steady population growth, intense pressure on limited land resources has forced people to migrate to already densely-packed urban areas. Although the process of urbanization and the growth of cities is generally associated with increasing national production and higher levels of per capita GDP, poverty remains a persistent feature of urban life. Low incomes and miserable living conditions define life for a vast number of India's urban-dwellers. India's metros, such as Delhi, Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Bombay, Hyderabad, Bangalore and other cities, who absorb India's poor migrants from virtually all over the country simply cannot afford to stay aloof from this problem. The rapid increase in India's city population (presently around 28 per cent) has resulted in the growth of what are called slums or squatter settlements resulting in serious social, economic, and environmental problems. Not unlike cities in other developing nations, roughly 20 to 25 per cent of India's urban families live in slums, squatter settlements or refugee colonies due to the non-availability of affordable habitat in modern urban settlements. According to Government figures, the percentage of urban households living in recognized slums is the highest in Maharashtra (25.4), followed by Orissa (19.1), Arunachal Pradesh (18.2), Madhya Pradesh (18.1), and West Bengal (17.6). The problem of the urban poor has bedeviled planners and social scientists for quite some time not just because of the shocking poverty, but also because of the unsanitary surroundings and consequent health risks. With slums mushrooming at an alarming rate, current methodologies to control and limit them have not been successful. A related concern is that of food security. There has been a repeated concern that India’s population growth might outstrip increases in food output. However, to date, the largest increases in the production of food - (not just in aggregate production, but also in per capita terms) have been taking place in India. In the three-year periods of 1979-1981 and 1991-1993, world-wide food production per head moved up by 3 percent, whereas per capita food production jumped 23 percent in India. Notice that this puts the lie to the idea that hunger is a product of population outstripping food in India. There is hunger in India, because, political, economic and social institutions are geared towards the interests of the elites, and whereas vested interests subvert the role of the local, state and national governments in the public distribution system of grains. There has also been tremendous international pressure (from Western Monetary Institutions) to wind up India's PDS (Public Distribution System). There are also many un-rectified inefficiencies in the acquisition and storage of grain. It is estimated that as much as one-fourth of the grains managed by the Food Corporation of India are wasted due to spoilage, disease, or transportation losses. Thus even as the government's cost of storing and handling the distribution of grain has greatly increased, availability of grains to the poorest of the poor has actually worsened. Moreover, diminishing soil productivity has been increasing costs of production thus increasing the burden of subsidies that are provided to a small section of India's farmers. These problems are aggravated by
the fact that the
geographical distribution of poverty in India is highly uneven. Roughly
30 per cent of the people in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh
live below the official poverty line as compared to between 3 to
7 per cent in Himachal Pradesh and Punjab. Apart from food, few in India can deny that the country is facing an intense crisis over resources. There is intense competition for the nation's limited natural resources that is leading to quarrels between states (such as the Kaveri dispute), between communities, and even disputes within families. the nation's land and water resources are being exploited to the hilt. The exploitation of mineral resources is threatening forests, nature reserves, and general ecology. Seventy percent of India's energy resources need to be imported putting constant pressure on India to export more, or face currency devaluations. Over-use of resources is leading to natural disasters occurring more frequently and with greater devastation. For many Indians, life is a big enough struggle just to put together the bare essentials for survival, but shortages of resources makes things even worse, especially for the poor and underprivileged. Even as sections of India's middle-class struggle with scarcities - it is the poor and vulnerable sections of society who suffer most. As famine raged in many parts of India, reports from Gujarat and Rajasthan indicated that least-influential villagers are the last to get access to water. Reports also indicate that much of the burden of collecting water is placed on women who often walk for miles a day to fill a pot or two of water. Some have suggested that states like Gujarat and Rajasthan have paid insufficient attention to traditional water-harvesting methods that could be vital to augment scarce water resources. Others argue that if the Narmada project were to be completed in some acceptable form, that could alleviate such problems in the future. But even with appropriate development schemes and optimum utilization of scarce resources, it would be hard to argue, that on a per capita basis, India's natural resources aren't becoming severely strained. So far, these resources have been shared in a very unequal
way. Some Indians have the luxury of taking long showers twice or
thrice a day - even their pets are bathed daily, and their cars
scrubbed from top to bottom. Other Indians are lucky if they get to
bathe once a week. If in the future, India were to become a more egalitarian
nation, and attempted to share its water-resources in a fairer and
more just way, it is evident that with projected population growth
rates, it is unlikely that every Indian citizen will have access
to a reasonable amount of water every day. The same would
be true of other precious resources like land, energy and scarce
mineral resources. In addition to the problem of scarce resources, high population growth also has
serious social consequences. As is already quite evident, industrial
growth can, and is taking place with virtually no increase in the
demand for labor. Improved agricultural implements and expanded availability
of tractors and mechanical threshers and harvesters has meant
that there has been little growth in the demand for agricultural labor.
Since most of the population growth in India is taking place amongst
those who will have the least skills when entering the job market
- India is likely to be inundated with either completely illiterate
or very poorly schooled youth and children in a stagnant, or perhaps
even shrinking job market. Since their
social contribution (and political bargaining power) is perceived
as being very limited, little money is spent on their social
welfare. The few government schemes run in their names are eaten
away by corrupt government officials. It is thus likely, that in the
absence of strong social organizations that represent the interests of
the poor and help build a more humane and just society, their seething
discontent could manifest itself in unexpected and unpleasant ways.
So far, most sections of India's
elite have done little to push for a serious population policy. In
large part this has been because they have benefited from this
unending supply of cheap labor. But this unending supply of cheap
and largely unskilled labor also has serious unrecorded economic consequences.
In the global market, this puts Indian industry at a competitive
disadvantage rather than advantage. Higher rates of profit are to
be found in those industries where the labor force is well educated
and highly trained. Indians who wish to sell India's "cheap" labor
in the world market will find that the scope for selling commodities
produced by cheap labor is ultimately quite limited. That will not
turn India into the "Asian Tiger” as some imagine, quite the contrary.
Government Policies: Since 1947, Indian government policies
have been marked by some positive achievements, but also, several
lost opportunities. In spite of certain accomplishments like
the endurance of a democratic political system, steady economic growth
and improved health infrastructure, two large problems remain: those
of poverty and population growth remain a challenging before the
people of the Indian republic. Attempts were been made to integrate population policy with overall development planning, beginning with the Five Year Plans that started in 1951. Each successive plan reflected a broadening of these programs to provide comprehensive maternal, child and reproductive health care. In 1976, during the Fourth Five Year Plan (1972-77), a policy including forced sterilizations was attempted by Sanjay Gandhi, former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's son. The program of forced sterilizations was instrumental in bringing down the government, revealing the high sensitivity of this issue in the context of India's electoral politics. The next government shifted the emphasis to voluntary family planning and its integration with overall maternal and child health programs. The Seventh Five Year plan (1987-1992) sought the attainment of replacement level fertility by 2000. The Eighth Five Year Plan (1992-1997) launched the Child Survival and Safe Motherhood Program. Efforts were made to provide ante-natal, intra-natal, and post-natal care to women. The pulse polio initiative, initiated in 1996, aimed at the eradication of polio by 2000. However, as is evident from the last census, only some of the stated goals have been achieved, and the goal of limiting fertility to replacement levels is nowhere in sight. In February last year, the BJP-led NDA government presented its new population policy. Although claiming to incorporate new and more effective incentives for population stabilization, a close examination of the policy (freezing electoral representation) reveals that it is lacking in concrete measures. The essence of the population policy is that by taking away the electoral rights of states whose population is growing too fast (i.e. the states in the Hindi belt), somehow the population of these states will come under control. Not only is this an unrealistic assumption, it is also discriminatory and unethical under India’s constitution. Ideally, the government should have probed why the Hindi-belt states have failed to control their population and what the center could do to facilitate that process. Is it merely a coincidence that in this last "liberalization" decade, it is the Hindi-belt states that have seen the least growth in industrial investment? That virtually all-new industrial investment (even from the government) has gone to the already more advanced states. Could it be that this lack of growth is preventing the state governments from adequately funding social programs that might contribute to poverty reduction and population control? It is not intended to provide conclusive answers as to why the Hindi-belt has slipped far behind in its social indicators - but it cannot be left to the individual states to solve this problem alone. They may be victims of unequal allocation of capital and government resources that could be aggravating the problem. And besides, the consequences of over-population in some states and urban migration in others are inextricably linked. There is evidence that some of the national-level population policies (such as those drafted in 1976 and again in 1977) were never discussed or adopted by Parliament. In 1983, when adopting a National Health Policy, Parliament called for a separate policy on population, but none was actually formulated. After the backlash generated by the mass sterilizations in the mid-1970s, few politicians wanted to be associated publicly with the subject of population. Following the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) - and partly in preparation for it - the Government of India appointed an expert group under the chairmanship of Dr. M.S. Swaminathan, to draft a national population policy following wide public discussion in order to generate a broad political consensus. In the National Population Policy (NPP) 2000, no direct disincentives are proposed, but there are some words on the commitment of Government towards voluntary and informed choice and consent of citizens to avail of reproductive health care services, and continuation of the target-free approach in administering family planning services. One of the comments that have already surfaced about the policy is that it is trying too hard to be all things to all people, and that it lacks effective focus. Important aspects of the policy that need strengthening are in developing instruments for effective monitoring and feedback, organizational learning and quality assurance. In particular, the approach to partnerships with NGOs is not well organized. So far as institutional structures are concerned, the new Technology Mission within the Department of Family Welfare, include members from outside government who are clearly committed to and knowledgeable about women's health needs and empowerment. However, other issues concerning women - such as gender equality, stopping violence against women, supporting women's reproductive and sexual health rights should also be integrated in this comprehensive health policy. These issues should be taken up not just by the Health and Social Welfare ministry but also by all government and non-governmental agencies, as well as by progressive organizations and unions. Private financing agencies should also come forward to assist in the success of the program. Stressing male responsibility is viewed as one of the important aspects of the program. So the policy should not miss an opportunity to strengthen the Government's approach in this area. Panchayaths and Zilla Parishads ought to be involved to influence decision makers in rural families to adopt a positive attitude towards the program. Undemocratic schemes like freezing the representation of the Hindi-belt states in parliament will not work, so schemes ought to be designed with compassion and sympathy for the poor. The most effective development policies are those which are socially just and focus on the well-being of all people. Issues such as gender inequality, social pressures concerning marriage, social pressures for having more children - especially male children, and the low status of women in the family and in society ought to be confronted. The well-being of small families ought to be guaranteed. To date, India's family planning programs have seen only limited success because the programs have not been tackled properly at gross root level. In fact there are many gaps to be filled in the policy, enforcing other linked social aspects such as enforcing minimum wages and child labor regulations. No attention has been paid to guaranteeing jobs to one-child family or decent schooling for those amongst the poor who do restrict their family size. There has also been little attention given to the need for old age pensions, health-care and disability insurance so that the poor feel secure enough not to want to have more children as ”insurance" for the future. It is also relevant
to ask if the Chinese experience might have some bearing on India. China's one (or two) child policy has thus led to women resorting to abortions to avoid "un-recommended" children, and has also pressured women (and sometimes men) - to undergo sterilization after they had had the maximum number of children the government thought they should ideally have. When voluntary persuasion failed, woman could be taken by force to a government birth control clinic for an abortion or sterilization procedure. China's approach has thus brought intense persuasion and even coercion, bringing together all the social, psychological and economic tools a single-party centralized state has at its disposal. The question is could such an intrusive
intensive policy be implemented in a highly diverse nation such as
India in its present democratic electoral dispensation? Some might argue that the current population crisis more than justifies economic and legal decrees compelling limited family size. Programs based on voluntary adoption of family-planning measures have not worked fast enough, and it has been too difficult to win over sufficient numbers of the masses in the time available. India's citizens and policy makers must therefore address this issue in a very serious way. The problems of resource management and equal sharing are only going to get much worse. Although India was the first country to adopt a family planning program as official policy, India's population is still growing at a rate that threatens to cause even more serious social and environmental problems in the future. What should the world's largest electoral democracy do about this problem? Politicians have frequently placed the desire of winning elections above the long-term good of the nation. However, it is important to rise above such expedient pressures. Conclusion: Given the magnitude of the problem,
any Indian government ought to be fully justified
in enforcing the one-child norm in the entire country, irrespective
of caste, creed or religion. It is China’s ruthless control of its
population during the past 25 years that has catapulted it into the
position of a superpower today. Perhaps a more serious debate is needed
in India on whether it should continue with its two-child policy
or opt for a one-child policy. It might also be worthwhile to consider
the experience of China, and investigate how aspects of China's population
policy might be effectively implemented in the Indian context. (Dr Ramana Kumar is currently working
in the World Health Organization (IARC), Lyon, France. He obtained
his Ph.D. from the International Institute for Population Studies,
Deonar, Mumbai. The views expressed in
this article are the author's opinions on this subject.) Other relevant sites: Shyam Institute, Population and Development Research Back to Index for South Asian Voice (If you liked our site, or would like to help with the South Asian Voice project and help us expand our reach, please click here)
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