The hot debate on regulating chaotic population explosion in the country is set to transcend from Uttar Pradesh and Assam to the parliament in this Monsoon Session. Both states have brought a two-child policy norm with incentives and disadvantages. Some ruling party MPs are also likely to push for a national population control law through private members’ Bills during the Monsoon session.
While BJP ruled Assam and UP are the latest entrants on this issue, there are several other states which have this rule for specific things like contesting in local body elections etc.
In Congress-ruled Rajasthan, if a person has more than two children, he is disqualified from contesting the local bodies’ elections. A similar provision barring people with more than two children from contesting local elections exist in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, Odisha, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
As a matter of fact, the first serious effort on population control and family planning was made in 1976 when the subject was added to the third list of the Seventh Schedule under the 42nd government and the state governments the right to make laws for population regulation. At least a dozen states had brought the two-child norm at some time or the other. However, some states like Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Himachal Pradesh revoked the policy.
In 2017, Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence Day speech from the ramparts of Red Fort had stressed the need to counter the population growth. Earlier to Modi Government, successive Union governments have too tried to regulate population growth but could not push it because of it is a sensitive political issue particularly after the compulsory sterilization drive during the Emergency in 1975.
The opponents of the population policy have been projecting any such move in a negative manner linking it to a targeted segment of the society. Following the Emergency days, for petty political and electoral reasons, no politician wants to touch it after the forced sterilization drives then. However, there is no point in comparing what happened ruthlessly in 1975-76 viz a viz the present context in the country.
Just 30 crores at Independence, India’s population has now become 134 crores. In contrast, China’s population had doubled over the same period. The pace of India’s population growth, now at 15 million per year, is the World’s largest and the fastest. It is projected to reach 1.8 billion by 2050. Millions still do not have access to clean water, proper meals, healthcare, and education. The unmanageable number and more mouths mean more strain on the resources. Had the population even doubled since 1947, it would have been manageable, but it has grown almost five times, which should be a cause for serious concern.
The problem lies in the states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh which account for nearly half of India’s population (48 per cent).
For poor families, more hands mean more income. But, it is necessary to manage the population explosion at this fast pace. What is the point of having more mouths to feed when the resources are scarce?
Thus, more positive steps are needed to control the population growth. The best way to do so would be to create awareness, provide education for the lower strata of society, and more incentives for voluntary Family Planning and disincentives for more children over two.
The narrative thus needs to be changed for the better. After consulting all other political parties, the prime minister should try to form a national population policy and bring a consensus on this issue.
