For population control, India is eyeing China's one-child policy - but some see Hindu nationalism at work

Shrabonti Saikia, a resident of India's northeastern state of Assam, was widowed last year when her husband died in a car crash. The 36-year-old unemployed mother of three suddenly found herself staring at a bleak future. Unlike some other Indian states, which allow widows to work in government jobs, Assam recently approved a two-child policy that bars those with three or more kids from taking up such work, with effect from January.

"A government job would have made us financially secure," Saikia said. "Instead, I've had to beg and borrow money from relatives to open a tailoring shop. We're barely scraping through as there's hardly any money left after repaying my monthly shop loan."

Like Assam, many other Indian states have also imposed a two-child policy, which deprives citizens with more than two children of basic rights such as running in political elections, accessing bank loans and receiving free rations, among others. Such regulations have gained traction throughout the country since the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) assumed power in 2014, although the national government has not yet enacted such a law.

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Analysts say there are two main motivations for the policies: first, an attempt to emulate China's one-child model, which some believe paved that country's path to prosperity; but, more importantly, an anti-Muslim angle, some claim, that feeds demands for such curbs.

"People who raise such demands equate population control with culling the Muslim population, even though there's no proof that Indian Muslims have larger families than Hindus," said Kavita Krishnan, a New Delhi-based activist focused on social issues. "This narrative is deeply divisive and is part of the government's agenda to persecute the community."

The issue grabbed headlines earlier this month when the government responded to public-interest litigation (PIL) filed by BJP leader Ashwini Upadhyay. PIL refers to legal practices undertaken to help poor or marginalised people, or to effect change in social policies in the public interest.

Upadhyay, a lawyer, had pleaded that India urgently needed "a population-control law, based on the model of China ... to have good health; social, economic and political justice; liberty of thoughts, expression and belief, faith and worship; and equality of status and opportunity".

Indian Muslim children during the Eid ul-Fitr festival in the southern Indian city of Bangalore. Photo: EPA alt=Indian Muslim children during the Eid ul-Fitr festival in the southern Indian city of Bangalore. Photo: EPA

India's burgeoning population, Upadhyay said in his plea, was the cause of corruption, had spurred a rise in crimes and pollution and had led to a dearth of resources and jobs.

Prescribing a two-child norm per family as a criterion for government jobs, aids and subsidies, Upadhyay's PIL recommended that the state withdraw statutory rights - the right to vote, the right to run in elections, the right to property, the right to free shelter and the right to free legal aid - for those not complying with it.

In a relief to many, however, the government riposted that India opposes forcing family planning on its people and is against any coercion to have a certain number of children, adding that China's one-child policy had been the cause of "demographic distortions" including an ageing population unsupported by a larger, younger population base.

Upadhyay is one among a growing circle of politicians and experts who have been making demands for population control in recent years. In July last year, Rakesh Sinha, another BJP MP, introduced the Population Regulation Bill, which suggested that people with more than two children should be disqualified from being able to run in elections. The bill has not yet been cleared for consideration, however.

In 2018, 125 MPs urged the president to enforce a two-child policy in India through an executive action. In 2016, Prahlad Singh Patel, another BJP leader, presented a private member bill on population control.

The issue gained added momentum when Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself brought it up in a speech last year. He said India's "population explosion" was disquieting and posed challenges for the future. The speech surprised many because India's population - far from exploding - has in fact stabilised over the years following the implementation of a national family planning programme introduced in 1952, with its primary objectives being to lower fertility rates and decelerate population growth in order to bolster economic development.

And even though India's population stands at 1.37 billion people, or one-sixth of humanity - second only to China's 1.4 billion - the total fertility rate in India declined from 3.4 births per woman in 1992-93 to 2.2 in 2015-16, according to National Family Health Survey figures. India's population growth rate also decreased from 24.7 per cent between the years 1971 and 1981 to 17.7 per cent between 2001 to 2011.

In fact, fertility rates are declining across religious communities, studies say, with a steeper decline among Muslim women. According to the latest National Family Health Survey, the fertility rate of Hindus is 2.13 and that of Muslim women is 2.62. In 2005-06, the figures were 2.59 and 3.4, respectively.

Krishnan, who is also the author of Fearless Freedom, a book about the personal and political repercussions of erasing women from public spaces, said if policies were indeed framed based on a religious context they would force marginalised women into forced sterilisations and other draconian family-size control measures.

Santanu Mishra, the co-founder and executive trustee of Smile Foundation, a non-profit that works in India's education and health sectors, said that apart from impacting women's health, "such measures can also backfire in the form of civil disobedience and deterioration of law and order".

A more effective way to restrict family size, Mishra said, would be to impart quality education, empower women, and remove social evils such as child marriage. India has the most child brides in the world, with over 27 per cent of girls married off before their 18th birthdays, according to Unicef.

"Government campaigns, involvement of the development sector and community leaders can inculcate behavioural change through inclusive measures," Mishra added.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India's "population explosion" was disquieting and posed challenges for the future. Photo: AFP alt=Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India's "population explosion" was disquieting and posed challenges for the future. Photo: AFP

Ranjana Kumari, director of the Centre for Social Research, a New Delhi-based think tank, said if the BJP-led government did eventually implement a two-child policy, it would be another step by the government toward infringing on individual freedoms.

"The current political dispensation is overwhelmingly involved in the citizenry's personal autonomy," Kumari said. "This may not be incongruous in an autocracy but is totally unacceptable in the world's largest democracy."

She added that the political infatuation with China's one-child model was misplaced. Implemented in 1979, the policy aimed to ensure that the country's population growth did not outpace economic development and that its impact on environmental and natural resources was minimised.

But China's model, she said, "has proven to be short-sighted, unsustainable and disastrous".

"It was scrapped in 2015 when the government allowed its people to have two children. But it has left behind a painful legacy - forced sterilisations, abortions, abandonment of girl children, plunging birth rates, skewed sex ratios, a rapidly ageing population and a shrinking workforce," Kumari said.

Like China, other Asian countries such as Vietnam and Singapore, as well as Hong Kong, also implemented family-control measures in the 1970s under which citizens were encouraged to have no more than two children. However, none were mandated by law except in China.

Some in India have theorised that the Indian government's attempt at family regulation is a strategy to divert public attention from its poor governance record. Raising deep fears of demographic disaster and complete exhaustion of natural resources works well for governments seeking to camouflage their administrative flaws, said Krishnan, the activist.

However, the government denies this charge. Said a BJP senior official who spoke on condition of anonymity: "It is statistically proven that India is poised to become the world's most populous nation, surpassing China. It is also a no-brainer that as a developing country, this will put a tremendous strain on our limited resources, triggering joblessness, pollution and a slide in human development rankings.

"Who can dispute that in such a scenario, population control can help avert an economic and demographic disaster?"

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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