INDIA’S POPULATION POLICY MYTHS AND REALITY
When Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath chose the occasion of World Population Day on July 11 to announce a new state population policy, there normally should have been no quarrel about it. After all, the state is India’s most populous, harbouring nearly 200 million people (as per Census 2011) or 17 per cent of India’s population. If it were to become a nation, Uttar Pradesh would have the fifth largest population in the world.
So instead of welcoming a policy to control the state’s burgeoning population, why was there such a storm over Yogi’s announcement? Sure, some of the birth control measures are coercive. While pushing for a two-child policy per couple, the state plans to introduce both incentives and disincentives to ensure its implementation. In terms of incentives, government servants adopting the two-child norms would get two additional increments during their service apart from being eligible for maternity or paternity leave for 12 months with full salary and a three per cent increase in the employment contribution fund. As regards disincentives for those found exceeding the norm, they would be debarred from contesting local bodies polls, will not be eligible for government jobs, will be denied a promotion if in service and will not receive any form of subsidies.
The bill is yet to be passed, and it is still not clear what final form it would take. But many of the measures are no different from what 12 other states have enacted in the past. These states have barred people with three children from contesting civic polls apart from other disincentives. In Maharashtra, those who have more than two children are not only debarred from government jobs but are also denied benefits of government welfare schemes.
What seems to have caused the furore in UP is the timing of the announcement, coming as it did with state elections just eight months away. A controversial assertion by the chief minister while releasing the draft policy—that it will not only help reduce fertility levels in the state, but also ensure “a population balance among various communities”—did not help matters. The government staunchly denied targeting of any particular community and, to be fair to Adityanath, the bill does not seem to differentiate between religious communities or caste denominations. But opposition parties immediately saw it as a dog-whistle, raising the bogey of Muslims one day outnumbering Hindus to polarise the vote before the assembly election.
Population control has always been a hot potato after the infamous forced sterilisation campaign
