The Malicious UP Population Control Bill: Chinese Experience and Some (Less Discussed) Aspects

[Sukla Sen]

"Population control" is just not a set of measures adopted by the state; it's also an ideology that rejects the sage dictum that "development is the best contraceptive" and treats humans as cattle - fit to be coerced (even in the sphere of intimate private matters).

Beyond that, it may also actively disfigure the demographic profile that impedes productive economic activities - by pushing up the proportion of those to be cared for vis-a-vis the (potentially) productive hands.

Here's a look into the Chinese experience.

<<A key metric in measuring the rate of population growth is the “total fertility rate”. The total fertility rate denotes the average number of children a woman has during her child-bearing years. A total fertility rate of 2.1 is considered to be ideal, as this means that a woman will bear two children with her partner, and these two children will take the place of their parents when they pass on. The additional factor of 0.1 accounts for children who might not reach adulthood or do not outlive their parents.

In 1980, when the stringent one-child policy was introduced in China, the total fertility rate was 2.61. In 2019, the total fertility rate in China had dropped to just 1.69 per woman after three-and-a-half decades of rigid enforcement of the one-child policy. In 2015, the Chinese State did away with the one-child policy – Chinese nationals were allowed two children.

In May, China adopted a three-child policy following the failure of the two-child policy in increasing the total fertility rate. China is now staring down the abyss of a demographic deficit because of its low total fertility rate: the younger generation are simply not having enough children to replace the older generation.

India, meanwhile, is bearing the fruits of a rich demographic dividend. The United Nations Population Fund defines the demographic dividend as “the economic growth potential that can result from shifts in a population’s age structure, mainly when the share of the working-age population (15 years to 64 years) is larger than the non-working-age share of the population (14 years and younger and 65 years and older)”.

According to the Centre’s Economic Survey of 2018-’19, 62.5% of India’s population is between the ages of 15 years and 59 years and is expected to peak in 2041. As per the Union government’s projections in the survey, India’s total fertility rate is likely to touch the ideal replacement level of fertility of 2.1 this year.

Interestingly, the total fertility rate in Uttar Pradesh has fallen dramatically from 1999, when it was 4.07, to 2.7 in 2016 – a staggering 30% decline in just 17 years. A paper in the medical journal Reproductive Health noted that the use of sterilisation as a means of family planning was just 18% among women in Uttar Pradesh compared to the national average of 36%. Sterilisation had not contributed significantly to the drop in fertility rate. Instead, the paper notes, the fertility decline in Uttar Pradesh was driven by an increase in the use of contraceptive methods among married women.

With only one in five women in Uttar Pradesh resorting to sterilisation as a means of family planning, what is not needed to achieve the total fertility rate target of 2.1 is coercing citizens into having less than two children by essentially forcing them to choose between undergoing so-called voluntary sterilisation or missing out on benefits conferred by the state for non-compliance.>>

(Excerpted from: <https://scroll.in/article/1000631/uttar-pradeshs-population-control-plan-is-not-only-unconstitutional-it-may-also-be-disastrous>.)

[Sukla Sen]

Please also watch: <https://youtu.be/k9lhG6mutQw>.

An excellent scan.

The presenter, it may be noted, is the husband of the incumbent Union Finance Minister!

So, he should know.

Sukla