| |
|
| |
|
| |
NEWS &
EVENTS |
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
FEATURES |
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
SOME HAVE
BABIES; OTHERS, REGRETS!
(Part 9)
-
Philip P. Eapen |
 |
|
Author's webpage:
http://philip.eapen.googlepages.com
THE TRUE FACE OF FAMILY
“PLANNING” IN INDIA
|
Population control programmes in India
began in 1951 with the first Five Year Plan. These
programmes gained momentum in the second, third and
subsequent Plans. Reviews of the programme in the Five
Year Plans show that the programme depended on voluntary
participation of men and women. As the years passed by,
there was increasing alarm in the government at the
rapid growth in India's population.
The increase in population from 365 million in 1951 to
445 million in 1961 and 527 million in 1968 has been the
result of a sharp fall in mortality rate without any
significant changs [sic] in the fertility rate.
The birth rate appears to have remained unchanged around
41 per thousand population during the greater part of
the past two decades up to 1965-66. ... In order to make
economic development yield tangible benefits for the
ordinary people, it is necessary tliat [sic] the birth
rate be brought down substantially as early as possible.
(Planning Commission of India, Fourth Five Year Plan,
[online]; accessed on 26-10-2006; available from http://planningcommission.nic.in/plans/planrel/fiveyr/4th/4planch18.html.)
It is interesting to note that a “sharp fall” in the
mortality rate was responsible for the steep increase in
Indian population.
 By all means, a fall in mortality is
good news! However, political masters were dissatisfied
because rising numbers made it difficult for them to
highlight their achievements as “tangible benefits for
the ordinary people.” (Planning Commission, Fourth Five
Year Plan)
By the latter part of 1975, the India government
panicked a desirable fall in mortality rate resulted in
the undesirable fallout of rising population! In
October, the Union Health Minister, Dr Karan Singh sent
this note to the Prime Minister: “The problem is now so
serious that there seems to be no alternative to think
in terms of introduction of some element of compulsion
in the larger national interest.” (Shah Commission of
Enquiry, Third and Final Report, (New Delhi: Ministry of
Home Affairs, 1978), 153. The Shah Commission inquired
into the excesses committed by the Indira Gandhi
government during the days of Emergency.) The state of
Emergency declared on 26 June 1975 gave the Indian
government an opportunity to show its true colours in
the area of population control. During this dark period,
the fundamental rights of citizens remained suspended.
The government was free to exercise coercion. Without
loosing this golden opportunity the government machinery
swung into action. The Prime Minister Indira Gandhi
declared:
We must now act decisively and bring down the birth rate
speedily. We should not hesitate to take steps which
might be described as drastic. Some personal rights have
to be kept in abeyance for the human rights of the
nation. (V. A. Pai Panandiker, P. K. Umashankar,
“Fertility Control-Induced Politics of India,”
Population and Development Review, Vol. 20, Supplement:
The New Politics of Population: Conflict and Consensus
in Family Planning (1994), pp. 89-104.)
The head of USAID in India, John Lewis, had extended
full support to the Indian government by saying that he
“would press [population] funds on the Indian government
whether it wants them or not.” (Meredith Minkler,
“Consultants or Colleagues: the role of the U. S.
Population advisers in India” Population & Development
Review (December 1971). In 1976, the government pushed a
constitutional amendment through parliament to bring
population under the concurrent list so that the central
government could legislate in the area of population
control. With no financial or administrative hurdles in
its way, the government set high targets for sterilising
men.
Muslim men were rounded up and forcibly sterilised. For
instance, police raided a Muslim village called Uttawar
and arrested 550 men; 150 of them were forcibly
sterilised. (Shah Commission of Enquiry, Third and Final
Report, 207). In the state of Uttar Pradesh, the
government forcibly sterilised policemen and personnel
in the prisons department to achieve set targets. Uttar
Pradesh, which failed to achieve a target of 175,000
sterilisations in 1975-76, performed 837,000
sterilisations in 1976-'77. Nation-wide, the number of
sterilisations shot up from 1.3 million in 1974-'75 to
2.6 million in 1975-'76, and again to 8.1 million in
1976-'77. Justice Krishna Iyer recounts a bizarre
incident:
“.. A chartered bus carrying professors for a seminar
was diverted to a hospital and all the learned
participants in the seminar were forced to undergo
vasectomy despite their protest. These were orders
perhaps from Sanjay Gandhi. The Governor was against it.
Many women from villages fled to the hills for fear of
the police carrying away people for sterilisation by
force. There was a sense of terror throughout the
country” - Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer, “Emergency the
Darkest Hour in India's Judicial History” Indian
Express, 26 June 2000
Forcible sterilisation probably was one of the strongest
factors that brought down the Indira government in early
1977. (For a common man in India, sterilisation is
equivalent to castration that can make him a eunuch.
Even to date, the government campaigns against false
notions that surround vasectomy.) After this change, the
number of sterilisations for the year 1977-'78 dropped
to “barely 1 million.” Political parties have ever since
publicly distanced themselves from coercive measures in
population control. The “family planning” programme was
renamed as “family welfare” programme. However, the
population control programme in India remained alive and
well in government records and pla ns. The government's
focus remained on raising the minimum age for marriage,
creating opportunities for women to work outside their
homes, research in the area of contraception, awareness
campaigns to spread the “norm” of small families, and on
offering incentives to those who maintained a small
family. (Planning Commission of India, Fifth Five Year
Plan). It is surprising to see that planners of the
Fifth Plan, unlike politicians, still considered
“permitting State Legislatures to enact legislation for
compulsory sterilization.” The sixth Five Year Plan for
1982-'87 lamented that the Medical Termination Act did
not consider abortion as population control measure and
recommends that abortion be regarded as a “corrective
method for failure of contraceptives.”
Following the International Conference on Population and
Development 1994 at Cairo, India, with other 178
nations, signed an agreement to end coercive population
control and to opt for a milder way to keep population
under control, namely, the empowerment of women and
promotion of reproductive health. (Betsy Hartmann, “Too
Heavy a Price to Pay: India's Two-Child Norm Hurts
Women, Girls and the Poor,” Znet Daily Commentaries, 4
January 2006). Accordingly, the Indian government came
up with a new National Population Policy that gave
priority to “voluntary and informed choice and consent”
of citizens while promoting “reproductive health care
services.” (National Commission on Population, “National
Population Policy 2000). This policy opposed coercion
and the use of incentives or disincentives. This policy
was not given a fair chance to run it's course; instead,
policy-makers grew impatient and decided to give “teeth
to the programme.” (Mohan Rao, “Cairo Door Ast?
Population Policies and their Context in India after
ICPD,” Indian Journal of Gender Studies 13/2 (2006)
247.274.)
Contrary to the Cairo agreement, ten Indian states
enforced a “two child norm” through various means.
(Betsy Hartmann, “Too Heavy a Price to Pay”). Some
states reserve their welfare programmes for those
families that have limited their size to two children by
accepting tubectomy/ vasectomy; some others deny food
rations to the third and subsequent children. Hartmann's
says:
In Tamil Nadu, agricultural laborers who lose a limb can
only receive insurance compensation if they have no more
than two children; in Maharashtra farmers with more than
two children have to pay higher rates for irrigation
facilities. Uttar Pradesh has gone so far as to make gun
licenses contingent on 'motivating' five cases for
sterilization. To get his revolver license, one rich
landowner drugged five of his workers and had them
sterilized without their consent.
The Indian government offers incentives not only to
those who adopt sterilisation but also to those who
perform it. Two Indian doctors reported to The Lancet
about this:
Local authorities are under pressure to achieve set
targets and the doctors are paid on a case basis …
inducements (cash or otherwise) are routinely sanctioned
to candidates for sterilisation, and the motivator is
similarly rewarded; the organizational structure is
insufficient, and informed consent is certainly not
obtained. Many gynaecologists pride themselves on the
number of sterilisations they do. (S. G. Kabra and
Narayanan R. 'Sterilisation camps in India' The Lancet
335/8683 (27 January 1990), 224-5.)
Similar to these incentives, there are tax benefits too
for small families. Tuition fees paid for just two
children per family is exempted from tax calculations
(IT Act 1961 as Amended by Finance Act 2006, ch VIII,
sec. 88 para. Xiv-b ). Several states such as Haryana,
Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan enacted laws that
disqualify parents of three or more children from
contesting in elections to local bodies; these were
upheld by the Supreme Court (Zile Singh v. State of
Haryana 2004). Several women, especially those from the
lower strata of society, have lost their offices as a
result of these laws; husbands have forced their wives
to go for abortion or to give away their childrenjust to
retain office. To make matters worse, the two-child norm
forged a deadly nexus with the Indian preference for
sons; this resulted in increased female foeticides,
upsetting sex ratio in several states. “The sex ratio
in the age group of 0 to 6 has decreased at a much
faster pace than the overall sex ratio of the country
after 1981. From 945 in 1991, the child sex ratio has
declined to 927 in 2001.” (Gargi Parsai, “India Should
Have 35 million more Women,” The Hindu, 22 October 2003,
12.) Betsy Hartmann rightly concludes that India's
unprivileged women and children are the most affected by
such coercive measures.
As long as the Indian government offers incentives to
those who adopt sterilisation or to those who have just
two children, its “family welfare programme” cannot be
called “family planning;” it remains a “population
control programme.”
Agencies or governments that do not promote coercive
measures adopt means to change the lifestyle of their
people; they may address social factors such as
preference for sons or health factors such as high
infant mortality to bring down fertility; they may also
promote factors that directly compete with a woman's
time and/or resources to have/nurture children.
Whichever way population control is done, the basic
assumption is that parents in the Majority World are
irresponsible and inept at deciding the size of their
families.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
This page
is updated on Dec 17, 2009 |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
