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October  2000
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Garibi Hatao or Garib Hatao? 

The Maharashtra government’s new population control policy is not just anti-poor and anti-women, it is also anti-Dalit, anti-adivasi and anti-minorities


By Kiran Moghe

The role of population growth has historically been the subject of a major debate in development theory. High rates of population growth were taken as the major cause of underdevelopment and poverty, particularly in the Third World. These burgeoning millions, also seen as a threat to world peace and stability, therefore became the target of many birth control programmes, massively funded and sponsored by the western nations. Time and again, the bogey of population growth was also raised to caution the world about its fast dwindling resources. Such theories particularly found favour with the ruling elite of the underdeveloped countries, who enthusiastically implemented population control programmes, as with the Family Planning Programme in India.

However, there is now well-researched evidence to show that malnourishment, high rates of infant mortality, lack of clean drinking water, sanitation and education, all contribute to high death rates, and therefore higher birth rates. On the other hand, social policies that provide for the basic needs of the people, such as the provision of employment, nutrition, potable drinking water, access to health facilities and education have historically laid the grounds for lowering birth rates the world over.

This has also been the experience in the case of Kerala, where food security systems and employment have played a major role in the lowering population growth rates. It is this understanding that found expression in the International Conference on Population held at Cairo in 1994. The Platform of Action committed its signatories, that include India, to the implementation of target, incentive and disincentive–free population policies.

Equally, the "population bomb" theory that holds teeming millions from the Third World responsible for a future world of starvation and deprivation has been challenged. Models of economic development that perpetuate the unequal consumption and distribution of resources are increasingly seen as the reason for environmental degradation. The lifestyles of the elites in both developed and developing countries have been questioned for consuming far too many resources, in comparison to the poor, who are made the targets of population policies.

It is therefore quite shocking that the Congress–NCP Democratic Front Government of Maharashtra has announced a new population policy last month that blatantly violates the spirit and letter of the Cairo declaration and adopts the framework of coercion and browbeating of the poor to accept its concept of the "small family". It is becoming clear that state policies today are increasingly being influenced and dictated by the Washington institutions, viz. the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The Maharashtra government is signing a large number of agreements with the World Bank for infrastructure projects, where it is required to put in a place a number of policies, such as user charges and market pricing for public utilities.

Population control is another area of concern for the Bank-Fund, governed as they are by orthodoxy. It is therefore not surprising that the chief minister of Maharashtra,Vilasrao Deshmukh made two important policy announcements on his return from his visit to the United States. One was the privatisation of the state electricity board and other was the state population policy.

The state population policy outlined in a GR dated 9 May 2000 states that only those families who subscribe to the state government’s norm of a "small family" defined as "one with two living children" will henceforth be considered eligible for around 60 to 70 government poverty alleviation and other schemes. State government employees violating this norm will be denied medical assistance and house loans. The DF government also plans to implement the law passed by the previous Shiv-Sena government that bans those with more than two children from contesting panchayat and municipal elections. Incidentally, it was the 1996 BJP election manifesto that first proposed to deny the PDS to those with more than two children.

In very simple terms, such a policy is not only illogical, but also counterproductive. Cutting subsidies to the poor in the name of population control will only exacerbate the fundamental reason of high birth rates, namely poverty. As a result of IMF–World Bank sponsored structural adjustment policies, all government schemes are today being targeted to the "poor", defined as those who fall in the category of "Below the Poverty Line." Denying subsidies to those who need the poverty alleviation schemes the most will only push them further down the poverty line. Nothing illustrates this better than the move to cut the quota of food grains available through the public distribution system to the third child.

The scope of the public distribution system, once available universally to all families, has been progressively curtailed by the system of targeting. Today, rice and wheat at prices substantially lower than market prices is available only to those who are the official "poor". These are families who fall below ridiculous poverty lines of Rs 4,000 in rural, Rs 11,000 in tribal and Rs 15,000 in metropolitan areas. Barely 60 lakh families in Maharashtra qualify under this category, while lakhs of others have been forced off the PDS after a massive increase in prices that have brought them on par with the open market.

While lakhs of tonnes of food grains rot in the warehouses, hardly 20 percent of Maharashtra’s allocation is actually sold in the fair price shops. In such a situation, a decision to further cut the ration quotas of those families with more than two children will only result in a further worsening of the food security of the poor, who are the most dependent on the PDS. Considering that women are the last to eat in the house, it will also lead to falling food shares of women, and particularly the girl child.

Similarly, the law that will ban those with more than two children from contesting local government elections will affect the political rights of the poor. There is no evidence that such laws, already implemented in the states of Haryana and Rajasthan have led to falling birth rates in these states, but they have particularly had an adverse effect on the political rights of poor women, who have virtually no right to decide the size of their family due to son-preference and other social practices.

In one example in Haryana, an elected sarpanch facing disqualification due to the birth of his third child denied fathering the child in court, in order to preserve his post! Not only is the law patently authoritarian and undemocratic, since it takes away the fundamental right of political participation, it also discriminates against the poor, since they are the most likely to have large families.

In fact, the socio-political consequences of this policy are horrifying. Studies show that the highest incidence of poverty in our country is found in the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled tribes, followed by the Muslims. Since high birth rates are correlated with high levels of poverty, it follows that this policy is not just anti-poor and anti-women, it is also anti-Dalit, anti-adivasi and anti-minorities.

It is unlikely that the disincentives in the policy will result in any dramatic decline in birth rates. On the other hand, it will lead to further discrimination against the girl child, already a victim of severe economic and social discrimination in our country. It is more likely that the female child will be eliminated through sex–selective abortions and female foeticide, and this will result in a further decline in the sex-ratio that is already imbalanced. Population control, if achieved, will not be through declining birth rates, but by starvation deaths and elimination of the girl child.

Coercive population policies such as the one announced by the government of Maharashtra often find support from those who are made to believe that it is a panacea for all the ills of an underdeveloped country such as India. It must be remembered that coercion has not and will never work to control population growth, as was the experience with Sanjay Gandhi’s infamous programme during the Emergency. It would be more fruitful to create the conditions conducive to lowering birth rates, by providing adequate employment, food, health and education. It is therefore a question of garibi hatao, not garib hatao.


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