Dear Colleague:
An influential doctor in India suggests that his country should force
married couples to have one child apiece. India already has coercive
aspects to her population control program. Will India follow China down
the path to total, nation-wide tyranny over family size?
Steven W. Mosher
President
PRI Weekly Briefing
20 May 2005
Vol. 7 / No. 19
Top Indian Doctor Wants to Follow Chinese into One-Child Mania
By Joseph A. D'Agostino
Despite the massive and ongoing drop in India's birthrate, Indian Medical
Association President Dr. Sudipto Roy called for his country to adopt a
Chinese-style coercive one-child policy. The IMA had just passed a
resolution urging Indians to have, voluntarily, only one child per family.
That was not good enough for Roy, who called for the one-child norm to be
enacted into law. According to a Press Trust of India (PTI) story April
17, Roy said, "But a high-level delegation of the IMA recently visited
China and was impressed by the way the country has managed its population
growth so effectively. The IMA strongly feels that India has no option
but to resort to a one-child norm statutorily to ensure that it does not
move towards total anarchy."
Though Roy suggested that the IMA itself was going to call for statutes to
enforce a one-child policy, the Times of India reported April 24 that IMA
Secretary-General Vinay Aggarwal disavowed any such plan. Indian health
minister P K Hota said, "We are not in favor of any coercive methods. We
would rather give options to couples. What's required is quality health
service."
India's population control program has a long history of coercion, and in
some Indian states, the coercion is official: "Gujarat, Rajasthan,
Hary-ana, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and MP [Madhya Pradesh] have debarred
those with more than two children from holding a panchayat [local
government] post," reports the Times. "Such clauses also cover
municipalities and agricultural produce committees. They even debar
people from anti-poverty programs, loans, subsidies or government jobs. A
Maharashtra bill also proposes to bar farmers with more than two children
from getting irrigation benefits. Andhra Pradesh's population policy
recommends that education facilities be withheld from the third child
onward." Needless to say, unofficial coercion is far from unknown in
India.
As Roy proposes adopting a Draconian, Brave New World method for forcing
Indians to have fewer children, Indians are already having fewer children.
According to the United Nations Population Division, India's total
fertility rate (TFR, which is the average number of children per woman in
her lifetime) has dropped from 4.8 in 1980 to 3.1 today, and is projected
to hit the replacement level of 2.1 by 2025, and then will continue
downward. There's good reason to believe that India will reach a 2.1
fertility rate well before 2025, anyway.
Roy wants India to hit 2.1 in just five years, by 2010. And that's the
goal of the Indian government, though it disavows coercive methods. "The
National Population Policy 2000 (NPP 2000) affirms the commitment of
government towards voluntary and informed choice and consent of citizens
while availing of reproductive health care services, and continuation of
the target-free approach in administering family planning services," says
India's National Commission on Population. "The NPP 2000 provides a
policy framework for advancing goals and prioritizing strategies during
the next decade, to meet the reproductive and child health needs of the
people of India, and to achieve net replacement levels (TFR) by 2010."
Notes the commission, "In 1952, India was the first country in the world
to launch a national program, emphasizing family planning to the extent
necessary for reducing birth rates 'to stabilize the population at a level
consistent with the requirement of national economy.'"
The fruits of India's population control so far should give Roy pause.
The proportion of India's population 65 or over will go from 5% today to
15% by 2050. The imbalance between boys and girls in India is increasing
as Indian couples abort female infants in the womb in order to have more
desirable boys without going over their two-child quota. Though
sex-selective abortion is illegal in India, it's rarely prosecuted and
widely acknowledged to be prevalent. Roy's prescription will, of course,
make the problem even worse just as China has announced efforts to combat
her own massive gender imbalance, caused by her own population control
program. India's sex ratio has gone from 962 girls per 1,000 boys in
1981, to 945 girls per 1,000 boys in 1991, and 927 girls per 1,000 boys in
2001.
As India's economy grows rapidly and demand for labor increases, the IMA
is pushing hard for fewer of everybody. "India's current contraceptive
prevalence rate is merely 48.2%," complains its website. "Meeting the
unmet needs of reproductive health services is the key issue." It's
already committed to a voluntary one-child policy. Hopefully, it won't go
further.
Joseph A. D'Agostino is Vice President for Communications at PRI.
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Media Contact: Joseph A. D'Agostino
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