The Uttar Pradesh Law Commission released the Uttar Pradesh People (Control, Stabilization and Welfare) Bill 2021, days before the state’s Chief Minister unveiled a new population policy. The overall objective of the proposed law is the welfare of the people of the state by promoting the two-child standard. Assam recently embarked on a similar policy; Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said the policy was aimed at helping the development of the minority community in Assam.
The UP bill, like all population control laws, begins with a lofty goal before it begins to list incentives and disincentives. The carrot and stick approach to population control has long been in vogue in India.
Ever since Paul and Anne Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb in 1968, the idea of a population explosion has scared many policy makers. The Green Revolution succeeded in making India self-sufficient in food grains and averting the famines predicted in The Population Bomb. Many experts have said that the perpetrators’ fear of overcrowding is primarily a fear of poverty and its associated signs, such as crowds and misery.
The notion of population explosion is deeply rooted in our society and the idea of preventing couples from having more children comes up time and time again as a political solution. If all couples have two or fewer children, it seems logical that the population will stop growing. China adopted a one-child standard in 1979, which was later relaxed in stages. Those restrictions were finally lifted earlier this year and China is now officially encouraging couples to have more children.
In India, successive rounds of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) indicate that family size has declined significantly in all states. In UP too, most young couples already have two children. Despite this decline in fertility, the population continues to grow. Demographers call this “demographic momentum”. It is important to understand that even if all couples in UP were to have two children from tomorrow, the population will continue to grow. This is due to the large number of young people in the state. Unlike in the past, the population is increasing not because couples have more children, but because we have many more young couples today.
The argument that population control will increase the natural resource base is also wrong. It is more important to review consumption habits. The rich consume far more natural resources and contribute far more to greenhouse gas emissions than the poor, whose numbers these laws often seek to control.
The bill seeks to regulate all government benefits, including government jobs, development programs and even access to rations or subsidized food through the two-child standard. Government advisers have made two fatal miscalculations in the way they propose to apply the law.
The project proposes to use sterilization, tubectomy or vasectomy operations. If the law succeeds in its intent, millions of couples will undergo sterilization operations, not necessarily in the most aseptic conditions. Since a sterilization certificate will be the only way to ensure access to government benefits, these couples would have their two children in quick succession followed by a sterilization operation. If, on the contrary, they opted for spacing and their children were born over a longer period, the rate of population growth would be slower. The UP could face the contradiction of low fertility and high birth rates and an overall higher population in the short term.
There is also a political miscalculation in the proposed law, which the current dispensation may want to avoid with next year’s election. The two-child standard will be applied prospectively. To qualify as a “third child”, he must be born one year after notification of the law. Not all couples with three or more children who have completed their reproductive life will fall under the law. The law discriminates against young people. While all older people are automatically exempt, young couples will be at risk.
UP is a young state – a third of its population belongs to the youth. The law proposes to potentially exclude them from government jobs, programs and grants. The data clearly shows that it is the poor who vote most enthusiastically in the hope of obtaining a government that will meet their needs. The proposed law is not only unnecessary and harmful, but has the potential to lead to political and demographic disaster.
This column first appeared in the print edition of July 20, 2021 under the title “Road to demographic distress”. The author is Managing Director, Center for Health and Social Justice, India and Associate Clinical Professor, Department of Global Health, University of Washington, Seattle