India must build awareness on population control

In News

Recently, two Members of Parliament of the Bharatiya Janata Party introduced in the Lok Sabha a private members’ Bill aimed at population control in India.

Major Highlights 

• The Bill seeks to insert a new directive principle in Part IV of the Constitution enjoining the State to take all steps to control population growth by promoting small family norms and achieve a stable population. 
• The Bill also makes it a fundamental duty for citizens to adopt small family norms and work towards a stable population of the country.

The rationale behind the bill

• Population rise is the most significant reason for India’s slow rate of development, and the Bill argues for an immediate need for population control. 
• India’s most serious social and economic problems are its huge population and rapid growth.
  • Rapid population growth will lead to problems and extreme poverty.
• Policies framed by various governments have not been able to control the population and there is no law on population control.
•  A rising population limits the ability of the State to provide a better quality of life to its citizens since a large chunk of national income is spent on maintaining the existing facilities.
• There is a need for a law on population so that every Indian reaps more benefits from economic growth and deals with challenges posed by fast population growth.

the Discourse and  Debate around India’s rising population

• The debate and the discourse around India’s rising population are not recent, having begun since Independence. 
• India was among the first nations to address its population problem as early as 1951, raising awareness about the ills of overpopulation. 
• While there has been a significant rise in India’s population, there has also been a sharp decline in India’s total fertility rate (TFR).
  •  In 1950, the TFR was at around 5.9%, and is now 2% (fifth round of the National Family Health Survey, or NFHS). 
  • There was a steep decline after the 1970s, indicating an inversely proportional relationship between economic prosperity and the fertility rate.

• The debate around the need for population control has been greatly politicised in India. 
  • The entirety of this discourse around such a sensitive issue is often reduced to a petty religious issue, and, ultimately, the subject of development suffers.
  • In 2022 Uttar Pradesh government came up with the Uttar Pradesh Population (Control, Stabilisation, and Welfare) Bill, 2021. 

• It has been highlighted that population is a grave concern in the Hindi heartland, especially Uttar Pradesh and Bihar
  • But the suggestions were more political than practical. 
    • For instance, the Bill said that no government job would be offered to couples with more than two children.
    •  However, there was no clarification about what would happen to a person who had a third child after being in a government job or if, for some reason, a person with two children remarried and had a third child.
    • The Bill was seen to strengthen political polarisation and facilitate the politics of majority appeasement.

Conclusion and Suggestions 

• India does not need a law for forced population control. 
  • Forced population control measures have not shown promising results in the countries that have implemented them, the most relevant example being India’s immediate neighbour, China. 
    • The one-child policy has proved to be disastrous, causing a demographic imbalance. 
    • The population of China is aging faster than in any other modern country, owing to the policies of forced population control.
• External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar has countered the need for such a law by saying, “forced population control can have very dangerous consequences, it can create a gender imbalance”. 

• The focus should be on strengthening public health infrastructure and raising awareness about the need for population control. 
  • Any forced control method will impact the rate of aging.