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Well friends, we are discussing population policy of India. In the last lecture, I talked
about, how did population policy of India grow after independence. That it was in 1952
that our country launched official family planning programme first time in the history
of the world. There was no other country before India to launch an official family planning
programme. And that also means that the country had to learn from its own experiences, it
is own errors, strengths and weaknesses. There was no other experience in developed countries
or developing countries to fall back upon. Gradually, we have also seen that the policy
of India has passed through a number of stages. We began with a very cautious and a slow approach,
what we called Gandhian approach in family planning, which emphasize natural methods
and basically the idea of population control. Then we went to a clinical approach whereby
a number of clinics were opened and health facilities in urban and rural areas. And to
begin with rupees 65 lack was year marked in the first five year plan for the purpose
of opening of these clinics. When it was found that the clinical approach is not working
because people were not coming to clinics, they were not motivated, they were not aware
the family size decision, not subjected to rational decision making. So, it was though
that we must go for some kind of extension education. And a point change agents in the
form of grass woods workers in urban and rural areas who will go door to door and talk to
people about the need to limit family size advantages; and ways of doing this at the
national level, at the regional level, at the community level, at the household and
individual level, why should they limit family size.
After this starting with Ernakulam district of Kerala by a very dynamic IAS officer mister
Krishna kumar, we started having experimentation with mass vasectomy camps. And initially,
the camps were quite successful and gradually we moved towards what we call today cafeteria
approach. By cafeteria approach means, that we must provide all possible terminal and
spacing methods by terminal I mean, sterilization vasectomy and tubectomy and by terminal I
mean condoms, IUCD, oral pills, injections and also traditional methods of rhythm and
withdrawal and let the couples decide according to their needs. It can be assumed that initially,
as soon as their marriage is over. The couples may like to produce one or two children and
then go or one child and then go for spacing methods and sometime they produce their second
child or maybe if they need three then their third child and then they go for terminal
methods. So, there is a room for every method at different
stages in life cycles and accordingly couples can choose. So, the government of India must
include all the methods traditional, modern and in modern both terminal and spacing methods
leave it to couples to decide which methods to use. In between we have also seen that
during emergency time sterilization was stressed. And in one or two years time, the number of
acceptors of sterilization went up exponentially which was largely due to coercion and target
oriented approach, which boomerang. Subsequently, then when Janata party came to power in 1977
another policy was announced.
Now, today I will just introduce the first population policy statement which was issued
by doctor Karan Singh in 1976, who was at that time a minister of health and family
planning. I have brought policy statement in the original form; I will read that and
comment on that. The purpose is that you can to show, how complicated it is to develop
a policy like population. So, the policy has to deal with why, why do we need population
policy? What are the goals of population policy? How can those goals of policy we achieved?
What is to be done for that if you need extra data, research, cooperation from other departments?
All these things are discussed in the policy document.
The document also includes statement on politics, political institution. And you know the politics
is required because you know if there are regional differences in growth rates of population
because some states do better. Than the representation of those states on parliament is going to
reduce and to ally the this fear something has to be done about fixing representation
of different states on the basis of some baseline population, this is all this policy document
includes. So, this first population policy statement
was issued in April 1976. You may call it the first population policy statement or you
may just call it statement issued my minister of health and family planning. It was not
signed by president of India and in that sense it is not a formal policy statement of government
of India. The first population policy draft maintained that poverty is the real enemy
of the country. So, the goal was clear. What is the aim of having population policy? The
aim of population policy is to fight the continuing high levels of poverty. Then the document
must also tell something about the relationship between poverty and population growth. It
says that the fifth five year plan 1974-79, aim to remove the widespread abject poverty.
You see there are two terms, widespread and abject. Widespread means that in India poverty
is not confined to any small pocket in some small region of the country it is widespread.
It is a wide spread in all the states, it is widespread across social groups, across
different religious communities, linguistic groups, poverty is everywhere. And it is abject,
which means that the condition of people living below the poverty line is really bad, pathetic;
it is abject poverty, it is not poverty in a relatives sense in a relative sense, you
have poverty everywhere. Using the relative definition of poverty, you can show that there
is poverty even in Japan or United States or Sweden or Denmark, but in our case poverty
is abject because the condition of poor people is very decimal.
Now, by including minimum needs programme with an integrated package of health, family
planning and nutrition as components, our policy was aiming at removal of poverty. The
statement says that the population policy certainly gave boost to family planning programme
in India. The number of sterilizations increased several fold I have shown some numbers in
the last lecture, but family planning also created lots of controversies in this country
in that context.
Let us look at the draft prepared and released by doctor Karan Singh the then health minister,
it begins like this. The opening paragraph of the policy is this, with 2.4 percent of
the world land area, you know India as far as land area is concerned, India has 2.4 percent
of the worlds land area. But in terms of population, it has 15 percent of the world’s population.
Which means that the density of population in India is much higher than in many other
countries developed or less developed. Then the document say that it is estimated that
our population as on first January 1976 has crossed 600 million mark and is now rising
at the rate of well over 1 million per month. Since independence, 250 millions have been
added here, some kind rhetoric is involved. And doctor Karan singh says that since independence
250 millions have been added, which is equivalent to the entire population of the soviet union
with 6 times the land area of India. This shows the gravity of the situation of
population growth. The increase every year another rhetoric, the increase every year
is now equal to the entire population of Australia, which is two and half time the size of our
country. If the percent rate of increase continuous unchecked our population at the turn of the
century may well reach the staggering figure of one billion. At that time in 1976, he was
worried sufficient if enough action is not taken to control population our size might
reach one billion by the turn of the century. It has actually reached in 2001, our population
was more than one billion, but at that time in 1976 when doctor Karan Singh was talking
in these terms that was only to show the gravity of situation. And using rhetoric to make his
communication effective, he was saying that our population is exploding at a very high
rate and something has to be done immediately. So, he writes indisputably we are facing a
population explosion of crisis dimension which has largely diluted the fruits of the remarkable
economic progress that we have made over the last two decades.
So, because we are our population is growing very fast. So, to some extent it neutralizes
the advantage of economic development. If the future of the nation is to be secured
and the goal of removing poverty to be attained, the population problem will have to be treated
as a top national priority and commitment.
Second Para, our real enemy is poverty and it is as a frontal assault on the citadels
of poverty that the fifth five year plan has included the minimum needs programme. One
of it is five items is integrated package of health, family planning and nutrition.
Far reaching steps have been initiated to reorient the thrust of medical education so
as to strengthen the community medicine and rural health aspects, and to restructure the
health care delivery system on a three tier basis going down to the most far flung rural
areas where the majority of our people reside and where child mortality and morbidity are
the highest. You know there are urban rural differences and the rate of mortality and
morbidity are found to be highest at the village level.
Similarly, ignorance, general ignorance as well as ignorance of family planning methods
illiteracy and superstation have got to be fought and eliminated. In the ultimate analysis
it is only when the underlying causes of poverty and disease are eliminated that the nation
will be able to move forward to it is desired ideals.
Now, the logic continues even in the tenth five year plan it was said that the 20 percent
contribution to rate of growth of population is by high mortality, because when mortality
is high, when child mortality is high then in order to have say x number of children
couples must produce more than x number of children. In some cases, some children may
die and they are replaced by other children and in some other cases thinking that some
children anyway die people produce more children than they actually need. Then it goes to then
nonetheless it is clear that simply to wait for education and economic development to
bring about a drop in fertility is not a practical solution.
You know although as said in the previous paragraph growth rate of population would
depend on education and health and on our success our efforts in reducing mortality,
but we cannot wait for that. Removal of illiteracy or reducing child mortality to the levels
of the developed countries may take a long period of time two decades, three decades,
four decades. And in these two, three or four decades, the population of India can it is
already exploding he said and it can grow tremendously and wipeout all the efforts made
towards reducing mortality or illiteracy. So, the very increase in population makes
economic development slow and more difficult of achievement there is a two way relationship
between development and population. And therefore, you have to act on both, development and population
simultaneously. The time factor is so pressing and the population grows so formidable that
we have to get out of this vicious circle through a direct assault upon this problem
as a national commitment. There is a vicious circle more poverty more population more population
more poverty and we have to attack therefore, on both the sides. The president in his address
to the joint session of parliament this year reiterated the importance of stepping up family
planning efforts, and the Prime minister has on several occasions laid stress upon the
crucial role that population control has to play in the movement towards economic independence
and social transformation, specially in the light of the 20 point economic programme.
Then it talks about fixing targets. It says that considerable work has been done a number
of measures have been taken. We can plan to achieve the target of reducing the birth rate
from an estimated 35. According, to his estimate birth rate of India in 1976 was around 35
per 1000 population, a level of 25. So, 35 to 25 we had to achieve a reduction of nearly
10 percent in the birth rate of the country by the end of the 6 5 year plan. Allowing
for the steady decline in the death rate that will continue due to the improvement in our
medical and public health services and the living standards of our people, this is expected
to bring down the growth rate of population in our country to 1.4 percent by 1984. You
see how ambitious this target was, we are not able to achieve this 1.4 which was to
be achieved by 1970; 1984 even till now. And as we have seen the SRS bulletin of October
2009 gave us a growth rate of more than 1.5 percent. But at that time in 1976, this was
the target fixed by that the health minister. Now, how to achieve this?
So, in the first part they say that the land area of India is small, population size is
big and every year we are adding millions of people and they talk of Australia and Russia
just for comparative purposes to leave the impression that population of India is growing
fast and has a crisis dimension. Then they say that, there is a relationship between
development and population the root cause of high population growth in India is lack
of development, lack of literacy, lack of health facilities, but there is a two way
relationship. And we cannot wait to see reduction in growth rate of population till the time
level of literacy has gone up or level of infant mortality or child mortality has come
down. So, we have to act at both the fronts on both the fronts simultaneously this was
the logic. Now, how to achieve this, how to reduce fertility
and the target, the target was fixed the target was to reach the birth rate of 25 by the end
of 6 5 year plan and to achieve a growth rate of population of 1.4 percent.
The first step toward this was raising the age of marriage. Why raising age of marriage
is important? Because as they say that this will not only have a demonstrable demographic
impact, but will also lead to more responsible parenthood, raising age of marriage is a goal
in itself. It is a goal not only to break down the birth rate, but it is a goal in itself,
it leads to responsible parenthood and helps to safeguard the health of mother and the
child. Due to low age of marriage illiteracy high fertility more women were suffering from
ill health, malnutrition various kinds of syndromes of infection and malnutrition.
It is well known that very early pregnancy leads to high maternal and infant mortality.
So, low age of marriage is responsible for high maternal mortality, India has one of
the highest values of maternal mortality ratios it is also responsible for high infant mortality.
Also if the women of our country are to play their rightful role in it is economic, social
and intellectual life, the practice of early marriage will have to be severely discouraged.
They fix a target kind of they say that the legal minimum age of marriage for girls would
be 18 and for boys it would be 21. A very noticeable part of this similarly, in the
west Bengal, yesterday I found that menstrual regulation pills they call MRPS and abortion
are becoming quite popular among the poorer sections of society and among Muslims so it
is a matter of research. That means, if MRPS are acceptable to people, then there is a
need to do research on MRPS which are safe and with minimum of side effects.
The most sensitive part of this population policy was this paragraph, which talks about
compulsory sterilization. And which actually created problems for progress of family planning
programme doctor Karan Singh write that the question of compulsory sterilization has been
the subject of lively public debate over the last few months. It is clear that public opinion
is now ready to accept much more stringent measures for family planning than before.
I think he was mistaken, this was his assumption which proved to be wrong. And I remember that
at that time director of IPS Mumbai had actually want the health minister not to go for compulsory
sterilization. However, the administrative and medical infrastructure in many parts of
the countries still not adequate to cope with the vast implications of nation-wide compulsory
sterilization. We do not, therefore, intend to bring in central legislation you see this
paragraph means that the community is ready to accept compulsion in sterilization. If
the government of India is not going for compulsion right now, it is simply because they do not
have facilities in hospitals to sterilize so many people. Millions of sterilizations
will be required in short period of time. If you make such a law, if you make sterilization
compulsory and due to lack of facilities they did not make it compulsory. But they said
that wherever in states where they think that it is possible to sterilize so many couples
at short notice with the Lovell demand then they can go for it.
And then he says our advice to the states is such cases will be to bring in the limitation
after three children. So, they also specified that if compulsory sterilization has to be
adopted it has to be adopted after three. And make it uniformly applicable to all Indian
citizens residents in that state without distinction of cast, creed or community. This was very
this was very ambitious goal, doctor Karan Singh did not realize the sensitivities of
religious communities and people regarding this compulsory sterilization.
Some states have also introduced a series of measures directed towards their employees
and other citizens in the matter of preferential allotment of; this is also a kind of incentive,
individual incentive for employees of central governments and employees of state governments.
So, in this fear also they say we have decided to live it to each individual state to introduce
such measures. It is in the form of like somebody goes for sterilization after two children
an increment maybe given, preference in allotment of house building advance or vehicle advance
you know or various other types of perks preferences will be given to those employees of states
which have accepted family planning, which in those days meant acceptance sterilization.
Regarding communication the policy document says that we require a multimedia motivational
strategy means, we require involvement of mass media, folk media, traditional media,
radio, television and jatra, puppet show, folk songs and folk dances means all media.
So, we cannot rely on interpersonal communication through change agents or on the policy of
extension educational loan, we must involve all kinds of media. So, multimedia motivational
strategy has to be adopted for awareness campaign. And the document also says that the attempt
is move from the somewhat urban elitist approach so far we have had an urban elitist approach
of the past into a much more imaginative and vigorous rural oriented approach for communication.
Because it is mostly in rural area that people hold traditional views regarding family size,
regarding contraception, they have rumors, they have fear of various side effects, they
have the problem of lack of access to family planning methods. So, the documents says that
in this context my ministry is working in close cooperation, in close coordination with
the ministry of information and broadcasting and trying to draw the best media talent available
in the country into the structure of the new programme.
Now, this package of measures will succeed in its objective only if it receives the full
and active cooperation of the people at large. It is my sincere hope, doctor Singh says that
the entire nation very strongly endorse the new population policy which as part of a multi
faceted strategy for economic development and social emancipation is directed towards
building a strong and prosperous India in the years and decades to come. Now, this whole
document shows that raising age of marriage and women’s education were part of family
planning policies since the beginning.
However, too much stress on sterilization and targets proved to be counterproductive.
There was no need to be panicky; you know doctor Karan Singh was afraid of reaching
one billion, we have already reached one billion and the country survive it. Family planning
programme would have been much more successful if the first policy statement did not stress
on sterilization with involvement of all government departments, which include even the police
department. If you include police department in motivating couples to go for sterilization,
you can imagine what can happen and this is precisely what happened.
So, there were elections and congress party lost parliament election which was forced
largely on the issue of family planning. And when Janata party came to power then march
1997 nearly one year later another population policy document was issued, the philosophy
of the programme was changed and even the name of the family planning was changed. Now,
it became family welfare programme. So, earlier till the congress regime then the programme
was called family planning programme, it is name was now changed during Janata party regime
it was changed to family welfare programme. The change of term from planning to welfare
itself created and impression that now the attention is shifting from compulsion sterilization
to voluntary acceptance of contraceptive methods. But as a result of that for several years
family planning programme suffered. If you look at statistics of acceptance of not only
sterilization, but all methods of family planning including IUDS, pills, condoms; you find that
there was virtually no acceptance of family planning in the following years. And in now
in the next lecture, we will talk about Janata policy and the recent particularly about the
national population policy 2000. Document issued by doctor Karan Singh in 1976 not only
tells us about the thinking of the planners at that time, but this also raises issues
of choice, research, awareness campaign and intersectoral or interdepartmental coordination.
It is, I think sufficiently provocative and I am sure that you have several questions
in your mind maybe you can ask one or two of them and I will try to answer.
Thank you sir, actually, before I useful an informative lecture, this gave me clear cut
picture of the this national population. In thus, in this policy doctor Karan Singh mentioned
some message for effective for regulating the population policy. For the of this for
me I am very much impressed with three factors, one is the raising age of marriage another
compulsory registration of marriage and another is the monitory incentive or common sterilization
this regard to the first one that is the raising the age of marriage and compulsory registration
of marriage. Till here they did it is not only it this raising the age of marriage has
not only demographic in back, but, also their responsible pair enough compulsory registration
also. But you know that even though India there
are of so many law legally so that marriages for men it is 21 for women’s it is 18 and
also the marriage should be registered. But and then after lot of I think in this is now
2010, but how to what extent it is effective in India. So, I think it means that till even
though we have low it is effectives the laws or not strict. Should be he also mentioned
that cognizable, should be considered as a cognisable one it means that it should be
treated we should treat the verities of people ask hooks under non bail able warrant I think
they are even though we have law, but laws are not much effective. I think that is the
the second in the monitory incentives for sterilization. I think it is the, there is
the lot of ethical issues. In that he also mentioned that if you have
an monitory compulsion or incentive for sterilization mainly focus on the poor people. You know
that in Indian context poor people or the females are you see, you mean that we are
utilizing or exploiting their ignorant in this family planning, I do not know I think
little bit skeptical thinking about the ethical aspects or moral aspects of we are utilizing
exploiting the we are giving monitory. Mainly, focus on the poor people and females that
these two things that I am little bit. You are right, regarding the issue of age
of marriage this is true that we have not been able to implement this law. Subsequently,
it became a law it is illegal. Today it is illegal to a raise for daughters marriage
at age less than 18 and son’s marriage is at age less than 21. And we have lots of data,
we have census data, NFHS data, data from other surveys to show that nearly fifty percent
of all the marriages of girls are still taking place below the age of 18. And there are regional
variations there are state vise, district vise variations, variations according to social
groups. You see this is because partly deals with the problem of government that as long
back in Asian drama Gunnar Myrdal said that Asian states are soft states they are not
able to implement, but, they want to implement. So, willingness to do something is one thing
and ability to do that thing is another thing. Due to poor governance or strong will or you
know strong apparatus to implement their policy they are not able to do that.
But as a student of sociology, you known that societies run by certain norms and norms we
include folkways, we include moose for traditions, customs and enacted law is just one part of
the norms of society. Enacted law has to be more progressive, it is a law concisely developed
representing the collective will of people or at least collective will of a state. But
this is just one part of the normative structure it is not everything. And we know that whenever
there is a conflict between moose of society, customs or traditions of society and enacted
laws. Then customs and traditions are followed enacted laws take a back seat. You see we
have enacted law regarding bribe regarding corruption we have laws in the domain of terrorisms,
secessionism rioting we have so many laws in say so many fields. But in no field you
can say that laws are 100 percent effective, but at the same time you can also not underplay
the importance of law. Law is a vehicle of change and law raises
people consciousness, law gives a direction, law presents a goal before the state machinery
police judiciary, and also create sometimes some fear in mind. Imagine if there is no
fear of getting apprehended for accepting bribe what will happen or if there is no law
regarding getting capital punishment for *** what can happen. So, law is there, but there
is no society in which enacted laws 100 percent effective so that applies to age of marriage
also. But there is no doubt that age of marriage is rising, it is rising partly because of
this enacted law and partly because of social economic development and urge among people
all sections of society to educate their girls and also a desire among girls their parents
to send them for jobs education for jobs, education for decent marriage.
In several communities at the time of marriage now they prefer an educated girl. So, for
the marriage reasons, for the reason of jobs, for making them independent, for empowerment
of girls, women, education is spreading fast and government is also doing a lot in providing
facilities for education. Opening of more schools, colleges, primary, secondary, tertiary
at all levels. Regarding this compulsion sterilization and
incentives actually, the problem with doctor Karan Singh, prime minister Indira Gandhi
and her cabinet colleagues and many experts at that time was that they got frightened
by seeing that the population of India is continuously growing at rate more than 2 percent
per year. And there was also perhaps pressure as record
show, there was also a pressure from international community to check the population growth rate.
And in that panic what feedback they were getting from consultants, some consultant
not all consultants, experts, educated people, cabinet colleagues, politicians some people
in the party involving in ingratiation and accepting everything that the leader says
he got the idea that there is a general will to implement compulsion in sterilization.
That those who are responsible people, the people who are responsible enlightened committed
to national cause they are using family planning methods others are not using.
He did not realize that if somebody is using family planning methods or limiting family
size it is not because of greater nationalism or commitment economic development of the
country, but for personal reasons. Therefore, personal reasons social mobility reasons or
what we call social capillary theory. For entirely one’s own personal reasons of familiar
reasons household reasons one was using family planning method. They thought that time has
come to take stringent measures in family planning, they immediately thought of incentives
because incentives were work. Starting from Ernakulum in mass vasectomy camps in IUCDS
incentive had work in tribal areas and in those days 100 rupees was a big amount.
So, in tribal areas if you tell somebody that you will get 100 rupees, you will get rice,
you will get paddy and it is a small operation sometime people did not fully understand even
implication of this sterilization operation and they came for sterilization for the sake
of that money. So, they thought that in some areas this will motivate couples to come for
a sterilization. But yes this raises several ethical questions, those ethical questions
were certainly ignored as though they were buying fertility of poor people, backward
poor, rural, tribal people and they suffer. So, the family planning programme suffered,
congress party suffered and the programme collapsed that was a mistake on their part.
This assumption was a mistake and people were not ready to go for compulsion in sterilization,
Muslims are still not ready. And Muslims would still not accept actually even others will
not compulsion is unethical, nobody will accept compulsion. And especially among Muslims were
in their perception in India, sterilization is against the religion. And if somebody’s
sterilized then the last prayer after somebody’s death cannot be held. So, there will be lot
of resistance, if you go for sterilization in the community. Thank you.