Voices demanding population control are growing louder in India, the most recent being Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leader Mohan Bhagwat, who advocated for a population control law to correct “the religion-based demographic imbalance” in the country, on October 5 in his annual Dusshera address.
From environmental concerns to religious bigotry, many Indians over the years have given many reasons to support a population control law. But as data and evidence show, a law like this is not only unnecessary but also counterproductive for a country like India.
India’s political establishment has simultaneously romanticized and worried about the country’s rapid population growth and resource constraints and has long argued for population control, even by force. In the past, this has also received support from international bodies such as the world Bank. It was the backdrop for population control in the 20th century, whose darkest moment was the forced sterilizations at the height of the emergency.
Since then, India’s population control regime has largely moved away from coercion towards a system based on incentives and dissemination of information. This, combined with increased prosperity and education in the country, has steadily reduced the country’s population growth rate to less “frightening” levels. At current rates, demographers estimate that India’s population will peak at 1.6 billion by 2047 and decline after that, which is a far cry from the demographic apocalypse often fantasized by many.
Therefore, the recent wave of increased demands for population control is surprising, especially considering that India’s Total Fertility Rate (TFR) has plummeted. below replacement levels earlier this year (meaning India’s population will begin to decline at some point in the future). Two ragtag groups are raising demands for population control in India; India is believed to have too many people and will face a shortage of resources in the future due to its large population. They advance the same arguments as the old Indian regime for population control.
But, in the present, the second group is stronger and more powerful. They argue that some communities (almost always Muslim) grow disproportionately more than others, sometimes with the explicit aim of outnumbering other communities through a “jihad of the people“, and that calls for a population control law to stop their hitherto uncontrolled expansion. A much smaller group uses the same reasoning, except they blame North Indian states In place. This leads to the conclusion that development indicators like education and income determine population growth rates better than religion, as seen in the case of Hindus in Uttar Pradesh who have a upper TFR than Kerala Muslims.
Neither of the above two claims stands up to proof or scrutiny. The world is very far from facing a shortage of resources and can sustain Billions more people. The demographic transition theory suggests that as countries grow, their populations will peak and fall on their own (corroborated by evidence worldwide). This is one of the reasons why international organizations do not give much Support for population control (especially coercive measures).
There isn’t much evidence to support the second claim either. No credible modeling suggests that the Muslim population will exceed 17% of Indian population. Moreover, the community’s TFR has dropped faster than India’s TFR, making it impossible for Muslims to become the majority community. As hard-hitting former SY Election Commissioner Qureshi book proves that there has been no evidence, other than imaginative theories, of an organized ‘population jihad’ plot to increase the population of India, even taking into account the insane logistics and resources required to do anything close to it.
One could always support a population control law, in part because of its perceived success in countries like China (or in Bhagwat’s case, East Timor, Kosovo and South Sudan). The emblem of China One-child policy restricted each Han Chinese couple to only one child beginning in 1979 to avoid overcrowding and a shortage of resources. In the past, this policy has been widely cited as a success.
Except lately to research suggests that is not the case. Most of China’s slowing population growth can be attributed to its economic development, increased education, and (usually voluntary) population control measures taken before 1979. Anything that is solely attributed to the law it -even is useless, because even the Chinese government has admitted that the population has slowed down too quickly.
But it would be wrong to claim that it had no impact. It’s just that any impact it had was negative; It’s dramatic worsened the sex ratio in the country, resulting in generation of missing women and mail order brides. India is also facing a similar problem of missing women, as stated by academics like Amartya Sen, although we had no cap on the number of children. No one would want to guess how many more missing women India would have if we were to implement something similar to China’s policy.
Enacting population control law, especially coercive law, is not a necessity of the hour for us. It is an overreaction to an overblown problem that is unnecessary, coercive, sexist, communal, and based on ignorant or malicious arguments. For a country that has succeeded in voluntary family planning and whose take-off depends on its reserves of human capital, there is no need to clip its wings.
Nidan Ali Basheer is studying Development Studies at IIT Madras and is an Editorial Fellow at Fellowship for Freedom in India.
Feature Image: Mohan Bhagwat, Head of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), addresses a Vijayadashami reception, Nagpur, Wednesday, October 5, 2022. Photo: PTI