Population bomb still ticking, defuse it or else…
PM’s concern not enough, CMs should translate it into action plan
LUCKNOW: During my visit to Meerut a few years back, I happened to meet a family with 22 children. I asked the couple how they remembered the names of their children. “We have numbered them,” one parent said.
The parents are affluent, but can they really educate all the 22 children? What about their jobs and futures? For India to become a truly developed nation, this is one area that needs sustained focus.
Ever since Narendra Modi became prime minister with a huge majority, both in 2014 and 2019, I have been wondering why the BJP is shying away from population control programmes.
The Congress, and many regional parties, had political constraints. After the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s younger son, Sanjay Gandhi bulldozed through with compulsory sterilisation in September 1976, the Congress lost the 1977 elections. Both Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi lost Lok Sabha elections from their strong seats of Rae Bareli and Amethi.
Thereafter, all successive governments had put the family planning programme on the back burner, although in between, incentives were announced to encourage family planning.
Teams were sent to China to pick up lessons, but successive governments could not implement the plans for fear of political reprisal. Even the BJP governments did not really bring back the focus on population control programmes.
One of the incentives in Uttar Pradesh was a special allowance to those who had two or less children. Strangely, the UP government withdrew this incentive though Modi had rightly given a call to check population explosion from the Red Fort on Independence Day in 2019, saying this is a subject the nation must discuss .The NDA government is strong and the party has no political constraints.
Some Congress and SP leaders had supported his call. Former finance minister P Chidambaram (now in jail) had in a tweet said that everyone should welcome the prime minister’s announcement on population control and had described small family as a ‘patriotic duty’. Former MP Jitin Prasada had also supported the announcement and demanded a law to check it. He held uncontrolled population responsible for growing unemployment. Till then, the Congress leaders had not touched the subject with a barge pole.
The support on the issue had also come from unexpected quarters when the Muslim SP MP from Moradabad, Dr ST Hasan, advocated a law to check population growth.
However, soon the saner voices fell silent, failing to stir concrete discussions to formulate policies .
Earlier, when yoga guru Baba Ramdev had suggested that the government enact a law barring a couple’s third child from the right to franchise, to contest elections or enjoy any privileges and facilities given by the government, not many were amused (many political leaders have more than two children).
Statements like the one made by Surendra Singh, the BJP MLA from Ballia, appealing to Hindu couples to have at least five children to keep Hinduism alive do not help. Neither does the one by another Bharatiya Janata Party leader Sakshi Maharaj, who had asked every Hindu woman to produce at least four children.
Modi will have to push the state governments, while pulling up his party leaders who support Hindus producing more children.
It’s time the prime minister, along with all the chief ministers, re-prioritises population control measures in the country. Linking them with huge incentives could be one. This is possible even in a diverse and democratic country where aspirations are soaring. Corrections could be made from the lessons learned in the past.