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| Many people live in hard to reach places like this village within a Sanctuary |
It is the 11th of July today, the first world population day since the provisional results of the Census 2011 were released earlier in the year. As on all such occasions the discussions today are sure to be on the fact that we continued to add more than Australia to our population. However mention is certainly to be made that the population growth rate is now the lowest it has been in the last fifty years, denoting a success for a our population stabilization programme. However the disappointment of those who work on the issue of declining sex ratio around the census results may not be mentioned. This begs the question does population stabilization still concern itself only with numbers, or there are other things that need to be considered as well? In this article I will try to share some of the concerns that I feel need to be considered even though I feel that growth in numbers continues to dominate our mindset.
Right from the days of Malthus down to Hitler, population control has always appeared to be a way for controlling the population of undesirable persons – for Malthus it was the poor, for Hitler it was the Jews. However Population Stabilisation is not to be confused even remotely with population control even though some would like to believe they are more or less synonymous, or 'old wine new bottles'. To quote the National Population Policy 2000, which is the document which gave us this new phrase - “ a stable population ..., at a level consistent with the requirements of sustainable economic growth, social development, and environmental protection”. Clearly population stabilisation is a far more comprehensive term than the limited notion of population control or even family planning.
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| Have we invested wisely in our youth , our future? |
However before proceeding further with population stabilisation and its connotations, one needs to confront one of the crucial concerns of many well meaning people – both in bureaucracy and in drawing rooms. Will India remain the world's second largest population, or will India's population exceed that of China? The answer is unequivocally yes. Without any major catastrophe like a 'nuclear war' or any such disaster 'assisting' us there is no way India's will continue to remain in its second place. The reason for this inevitability is not due to the failure of our family planning or development programmes, but simply the current nature and structure of our two different societies. For one, India's population is still in its growth phase, not because people are having more babies, but more people are having babies . China, on the other hand, is contending with 'bare branches' or single men without potential partners - its population is growing older and contracting. Both of these situations are a result of our past generation's reproductive behaviours, and we can do little to change the course now. In China, the drastic one child policy, coupled with son preference, has led to a skewed sex ratio among young people, while in India, the fecundity of our parents, has led to much larger proportion of reproducing young people in our society. This youth bulge is often seen as an economic boon and called the demographic dividend, especially when we do not worry too much about the race with China on the population front, and are more concerned about the economies.
Having dealt with the nagging issue of numbers, one needs to confront the crucial issue of resource crunch. There is no question that the world is facing a serious crunch of resources of every kind, land, forest, air, water, oil – you name it, and there is a sense that our generation and the ones immediately preceding ours have behaved in the most reckless and irresponsible manner – spent well beyond their means, wasted away their inheritance, emptied the collective coffers of mankind. Fortunately there are no debtors prisons, or bankruptcy courts to deal with such profligacy. Unfortunately there are no chances for a comeback like with the American billionaire Donald Trump (who has repeatedly filed for bankcruptcy and protected his billionaire status), because in this case there is little left for any one – not now, and perhaps not for a long long time to come. But the question that needs to be confronted is how does this situation relate to the large number of people living below the poverty line in India? You are right there is absolutely no relation between the acute shortage of natural resources, lack of clean water, pure air, carbon emissions or melting of polar ice-caps or Himalayan glaciers with the number of poor in India, no matter which committees' measure you choose to use – Tendulkar, Saxena or Wadhwa. These poor do not drive cars, do not fly on jet planes, do not water their garden with clean drinking water or change their furniture as their moods change. On the other hand while millions get barely enough to eat, and some eat mud to quell their hunger, those who flirt with natural resource bankruptcy gorge chicken pigs and cattle with edible grain and pump them with hormones for delectable steaks and porkchops.
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| What will our children say about the legacy we will leave behind ? |
The reasonable reader must now be wondering, surely population stabilisation has to be related to family planning and to the total fertility rate. Haven't we been taught in schools and colleges and in our policy documents about the importance of a TFR of 2.1 and the need for family planning in order to achieve it? The reasonable reader is right that family planning, more specifically, contraception is essential for limiting the number of children in line with the desire and aspiration of the couple, especially women who have to take a disproportionate load of the reproductive burden. In developed societies, ones we wish to emulate, women, considering their disproportionate reproductive load often choose to have fewer than two children, which often makes mockery of the national desire of a TFR of 2.1. Today most countries in Western Europe are maintaining their population through immigration rather than birth among the native populations. However, the discerning reader will correctly point that situation is perhaps not even a distant reality for us. Women in India, especially those who live in Uttar Pradesh or Bihar or Rajasthan, hardly know how to read and write and choose to have more children. While it is easy to agree to the first quality – that they often do not know to read and write, it is difficult to contend with the assumption that they choose. In reality they do not 'choose' – when or who to marry, when and how many children to have or even when to stand up and say enough is enough when they are subject to repeated cycles of domestic violence. It is thus of utmost priority that women get education, become autonomous at least in decisions that affect their own lives. More often than not such women will choose to have fewer children, Both my grandmothers, both of whom had a Master's degree, only went through two pregnancies each one in the late 1920's and in early 1930's. Unfortunately both passed away before I could ask them what they did to maintain the reproductive autonomy in those days. I am sure family planning or contraceptive methods are helpful, they have been helpful for me and my partner. However there is no guarantee that the holy grail of TFR 2.1 will be maintained. Even today Kerala has quietly slipped below the bar while the focus was on UP and Bihar.
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| This young man was taking care of his two daughters while running his small shop. He had also undergone vasectomy. He is a poor Mishing tribal but will other men follow his lead? |
Availability of contraceptives, actually the availability of a variety of safe contraceptives, for differing needs and at differing points of time in the sexual life cycle of an individual or couple is a crucial component of population well being and reproductive autonomy. It is necessary to recognise the diversity of needs- across people and across ages and stages in a single person’s life. Thus young people first need couple counselling and then family planning counselling and temporary methods related services. Young parents also need family planning counselling and spacing services. We need to move beyond the overwhelming dependance of female sterilisation or tubectomy, which has little to offer to young people- the principal reproducing population in our country. However we also need to acknowledge sex as pleasure (not just disease and pregnancy), we need to see relationships as being potentially sharing and caring. We need to provide more options to couples, keeping in view all contraceptives can have undesirable consequences, and the choice is usually a tradeoff, but the decision should firmly be the user's own. Women's groups have rightly complained that the way the family planning programme is run appears to make it an effort to control women's reproduction. This has happened because we have in what appears to be an anxiety to reach goals easily focussed on 'targeting' women, rather than involve men in a relationship of equality. Simply by addressing men as caring husbands and fathers and responsible partners an equal number of potential users of contraceptives become available for counselling. Small experiments in different parts of India have shown that the Indian male needn't be maligned as being uncaring and incorrigible, where contraceptive use is concerned.
Two other areas where the Indian man needs to stand up and take responsibility is in his role as caring father and husband in the area of early marriage and pregnancy. As a father the Indian man should keep the concerns of his daughter central and refuse to marry her before she is able deal with the physical and emotional responsibilities of marriage and parenthood. As a husband he needs to explicitly state his care for his partner by delaying childbirth – both in the first and subsequent instances. Appropriate contraceptive service delivery is essential and supportive state mechanisms like strengthening the vital registration system a must. The laws relating to child marriage need to be implemented in spirit and much more attention needs to be paid to its successful implementation and prosecution in case of violation.
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| We need many more MEN to take much more responsibility for the family. Just being the provider is not enough. And this is not just for the poor. Without gender equality we will not have much we can cherish. |
Another social concern which is central to discussion on population stabilisation, is the issue of male or son preference. Son preference affects this discussion in at least two substantial ways. For one the practice of sex preselection has challenged the demographer's assumption that a TFR of 2.1 automatically leads to a Net Reproductive Rate of 1 or replacement fertility. The core substance of this assumption is that if there are an average to two children per woman then there will be one reproducing woman replacing her mother. Unfortunately the social desire to have a male child makes a mockery of this demographic desire – so we have a situation where couples prefer either to have one single male child, one male and a female child, two male children, but in no way is a single daughter or two daughters a preferred family distribution. Thus replacement fertility will not be achieved or maintained if the current social desire for the male child persists. While religious and cultural norms are often mentioned as reasons behind son preference, it must also be understood that current inheritance practices and lack of state sponsored social security mechanisms also contribute to a phenomenon of dependance on the son or male heir.
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| As a society we need to be sure that the old don't get left behind. |
The lack of social security mechanisms also affect another dimension of population well being, and that is of ageing people. Old age is a time when one is least able to deal with the costs of care on an individual basis. During childhood there is an explicit support of parents, however with smaller (socially desired) and fragmented families, the elderly population needs mechanisms for support of different kinds including healthcare. Demographers examine this phenomenon through the dependency ratio. Both childhood and age contribute to dependancy ratio similarly in terms of numbers, but the policy responses need to be drastically different. Unfortunately we have little in place for the needs of the elderly even though ageing of the population has already started in some of the earlier fertility transition states.
The review of population stabilisation strategies that is being attempted through this essay is being done in the context of many successes, some continuing concerns and some new emerging priorities.
Some of the successes that need to be acknowledged and stated upfront have been the successful transition to replacement level fertility in many states across the length and breadth of India. People from all regions desire smaller families. Contraceptive prevalence rates have increased in all states and fertility rates have declined. If individual desire was to be taken as the key measure of success then we would have reached our goal. Unfortunately health system support has not been adequate in many places, leading to high unwanted fertility. Childhood mortality also has seen high declines in most states but once again poor health systems in the same states have resulted in suboptimal decline in child mortality rates, one of the predictors of high fertility. Similarly other social sector programmes like education for girls has seriously hampered women's autonomy in these states. Thus a seemingly old problem, that of high fertility now needs to be viewed through a new lens. It is not longer higher desires which need to be addressed through policy prescriptions, but poor health systems, and as mentioned earlier lack of quality services and of choices.
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| Population on the Move |
