THE BOOMING QUESTIONS
WHILE REFORMS ARE MUCH NEEDED TO CONTROL POPULATION GROWTH, THE BIG QUESTIONS ARE: DO COERCIVE BIRTH CONTROL MEASURES WORK? IS THE GROWING NUMBER OF MUSLIMS A THREAT TO HINDUS? IS INDIA LOSING ITS DEMOGRAPHIC DIVIDEND? HERE IS A REALITY CHECK
Are the new population control bills coercive or necessary? Are they politically motivated? Is India at risk of squandering its demographic dividend?
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 of the Emergency; it was among the main reasons the Congress government led by Indira Gandhi lost the 1977 general election. The brouhaha over UP’s announcement raised fresh questions about India’s population growth and its policies. Among them: is the Muslim population growing more rapidly than the Hindus, and could it pose a threat to the latter? Is India still facing a population explosion and will coercive methods like those proposed by UP be effective in controlling the numbers? Are the concerns that India will lose its demographic advantage—in terms of a young population for cheap labour—if it purses a rigorous population control policy valid? Each of these questions have many myths associated with them that need a reality check.
Is the Muslim population growing too rapidly and will it pose a threat to the majority community in future?
Though Yogi Adityanath did not name any specific community or religious group, his critics were in no doubt who the target was. “This policy is pure political fingerprinting,” says Congress Lok Sabha MP Shashi Tharoor. “They [The BJP] are trying to demonise a particular community. We have seen this in Assam where they are concerned about certain migrant Bengali Muslims. In UP, we know what Adityanath and his henchmen are doing.” UP’s population bill received flak even from right-wing Hindu groups. The VHP (Vishva Hindu Parishad) has warned the state government that any population control measure should keep in mind the fact that Hindu dominance must remain intact in the country.
So what is the reality? The facts speak for themselves. At over 38 million people, according to the 2011 census, UP is home to the highest number of Muslims in the country. But the community still accounts for less than 20 per cent of the state’s population. Right-wing Hindu groups have often highlighted the difference between the growth rates of Hindus and Muslims in the state. Between 2001 and 2011, Hindus grew at 2 percent annually while Muslims grew at 2.5 per cent. But the Population Foundation of India (PFI) points out that while the Hindu growth rate declined by 5.6 percentage points during the last two census (2001 and 2011), for Muslims, the decline was even faster, 6.1 percentage points for the same period.
What about national figures? Encouragingly, there has been a significant drop in birth rates among all religious groups, including Muslims. Population Foundation of India’s executive director Poonam Muttreja says, “Significantly, the decline in decadal growth rates has been sharper among Muslims than among Hindus over the past three decades.” PFI calculations show that the decline in decadal growth rates during 2001 and 2011 for Muslims was 4.7 per cent in comparison to Hindus which was 3.1 per cent in the same period. The decline in population growth rates for Jains (20.5 per cent), Buddhists (16.7 per cent), Sikhs (8.5 per cent) and Christians (7 per cent) was even more steep during the same period.
Sceptics dispute these findings and point out that nationally, between 2001 and 2011, the Muslim population growth of 2.46 per cent annually was
“Significantly, the decline in decadal growth rates has been sharper among Muslims than among Hindus over the past three decades” —POONAM MUTTREJA
Executive director, Population Foundation of India
much faster than the figure for Hindus of 1.67 per cent, which was lower than the national average of 1.77 per cent). The counter argument is that it has not made a significant shift in population share. The share of Hindus in the total population came down marginally from 80.5 per cent in 2001 to 79.8 per cent in 2011—a decline of 0.7 per cent. While the share of the Muslim population, which in 2001 was 13.4 per cent, went up marginally in 2011 to 14.2 per cent, a 0.8 per cent increase. In terms of absolute numbers, PFI figures reveal that the Hindu population increased by 139 million during 2001-11, while the Muslim population increased by 34 million. A far cry from the visions of Muslim demographic domination being peddled to mobilise Hindus.
Such rhetoric also ignores cultural and geographical specificities, and the level of development, which are more important determinants than religion of how many children a woman will have. The state-wise data of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 2015-16 shows that the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of different religious communities have greater variation between states than between communities. For instance, though the all-India TFR is 2.6 for Muslims compared to 2.1 for Hindus, the rate varies widely from 1.7 in Tamil Nadu to 4.1 in Bihar. In Chhattisgarh, the Muslim TFR of 2.1 was lower than the 2.2 TFR for Hindus, while Muslims in Odisha had the lowest TFR among the three sizeable religious groups in the state— Hindus, Christians and Muslims.
More importantly, the TFR among Muslims has been dropping at a faster rate, narrowing the gap with Hindus. In 1992-93, the National Family Health Survey said that TFR for Hindus and Muslims was 3.3 and 4.4 respectively. In 2015-16, the corresponding numbers were 2.1 and 2.6. “Fertility differentials exist by residence, region, education, wealth index and socioreligious groups,” says Dr Sayeed Unisa, head of the department of mathematical demography & statistics, International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai. “Both the Hindu and Muslim communities have large sections of the socioeconomically most backward population with high fertility.”
Other experts, however, caution that the fertility gap between Muslims and Hindus in big states such as UP, Bihar and Assam remains a point of concern despite the decline. In Assam, for instance, 2011 saw the sharpest rise in Muslim population among all states as their share of the total population jumped by 3.3 percentage points— from 30.9 per cent to 34.2 per cent. Since 1991, the annual growth rate of Muslims in the state has been around 3 per cent while the Hindu population growth rate —just over 1 per cent—has seen a marginal dip. Though it has dropped from a high of 3.6 in 200506, at 2.4 children per woman, the fertility rate among Muslims in Assam is still the second-highest among all states in India in 2019-20. Overall, while the fears of Muslims overtaking the Hindu population are far-fetched, in some states there needs to be greater awareness created to ensure a uniform decline in population growth.
Is India still in the midst of a ‘population explosion’?
The votaries of population control got a big boost immediately after Narendra Modi returned to power in May 2019. During his Independence Day speech that year, the prime minister
Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, an ally of the ruling BJP, rejects coercive norms to enforce population control, and says women’s empowerment is a better plan
raised concerns over India’s “population explosion”, underlining the need for greater discussion and awareness on the issue. What is the truth? According to 2019 Revision of World Population Prospects by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, at its current growth rate, India’s population will surpass China’s by 2027 to become the world’s most populous country.
“In 70 years, we have upped our population four times without adding a square centimetre of new territory,” says Manish Tewari, Congress MP. “China is just a little ahead of India but occupies 6.3 per cent of the world’s land mass, twice that of India. In other words, India should have at best stabilised its population at 700 million and kept it at that.” India occupies 2.4 per cent of the world’s land mass but supports over 18 per cent of its population. This means there is only 0.5 acres for every Indian compared to the global average of 5 acres per person.
While most experts agree that a burgeoning population places pressure on India’s resources, particularly in urban areas, they assert that the country is heading towards population stabilisation, both with and without the help of government-initiated population control measures. In 1952, India became the first country in the world to have a National Programme for Family Planning, which was last amended in 2000. The policy largely revolves around promoting awareness about family planning and providing contraceptive support to couples. And despite multiple gaps in implementation, most experts claim that it has achieved the desired TFR of 2.1. The UN’s population division terms this as replacement-level fertility, which keeps the population stable. However, when it comes to states there is huge disparity in terms of population growth and TFR. Six states— UP, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh—account for roughly 40 per cent of India’s population, and have TFR above 2.1. According to a report by the Technical Group on Population Projections released in 2020, nearly one-fifth of the country’s total population increase between 2011 and 2036 may occur in UP. The other five states too require focussed attention to slow down their population growth.
Do Population Disincentives Work?
The Modi government is clear that there is no push to impose a two-child norm. Ashwini Kumar Choubey, the Union MoS for health and family welfare, said in the Lok Sabha on July 19, “There is no such proposal under consideration at present. As per the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) IV data for 2015-16, the TFR has declined to 2.2 from the earlier 2.7 in NFHS-III (200506). Twenty-eight out of 36 states/ UTs have already achieved the replacement level fertility of 2.1 or less. Additionally, India is a signatory to the declaration at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo in 1994, and in Nairobi in 2019, which advocates the honouring of the reproductive rights of couples to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children.”
In Tamil Nadu, reduction in infant mortality rate (IMR) by improving maternal nutrition helped lower TFR from 2.2 in 1999 to 1.7 in 2016
Ironically, this statement came on cut-off date the UP government had fixed for suggestions on the proposed Uttar Pradesh Population (Control, Stabilisation and Welfare) Bill, 2021. Since the 1990s, 12 other states—Odisha (1993), Haryana (1994), Andhra Pradesh (1994), Rajasthan (1994), Himachal Pradesh (2000), Madhya Pradesh (2000), Chhattisgarh (2000), Uttarakhand (2002), Maharashtra (2003), Gujarat (2005), Bihar (2007) and Assam (2017)—have experimented with some form of a two-child policy. Four of these states—Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, MP and Haryana— subsequently revoked the norms.
Experts have always questioned the efficacy of a punitive approach to population control. According to PFI, a strict limit on the number of children like the two-child norm will
unleash a rapid increase in sex-specific abortions and divorce. In her 2006 book, The Law of Two Child Norm in Panchayats, Nirmala Buch, a former chief secretary of MP, documented how the two-child law in various states led to a rise in sex-selective and unsafe abortions. Men divorced their wives to run for local body polls and families gave up children for adoption to avoid disqualification.
The situation gets compounded when such norms are introduced without factoring in socioeconomic indicators. A 2009 report supported by the panchayati raj ministry showed that in 21 districts in five states where the two-child norm was operational, 54 per cent of the disqualified candidates were either illiterate or had only primary education, 78 per cent belonged to SCs/ STs/ OBCs and nearly half of them had an annual income of less than Rs 20,000.
China followed a strict one-child policy for more than 30 years. According to a 2016 study by the Institute for Population and Development Studies, Xi’an Jiaotong University, the policy resulted in undesirable consequences like sex-selective abortions, depressed fertility levels, irreversible population ageing, labour shortages and economic slowdown. Realising their folly, China abandoned the one-child norm in 2016 and is now officially encouraging a three-child norm.
What then is the best birth control method?
The real issue is that while India has propagated birth control since 1952 as a national policy, the burden for family planning has largely been on women. Men in India hardly opt for contraceptives such as sterilisation or even condoms because of the cultural perception that birth control is not a “masculine” thing. Only 25 per cent of married men use contraceptives as against 48 per cent of married women. Worse, the NFHS-4 data reveals that not even half of the women who avail family planning counselling are informed of other options beyond irreversible methods such as sterilisation.
“Even if the ministry of health and family welfare (MoHFW) provides six different alternatives, most women aren’t informed of them,” says Debanjana Choudhuri, Asia advocacy and partnerships advisor, Foundation for Reproductive Health Services in India (FRHSI). So, of all the women who opt for birth control, a whopping 77 per cent go for sterilisation. The fear now is that the incentives for two children will drive more families to force their women to go for sterilisation, a procedure that can even be harmful to maternal health if done immediately after birthing. Chaudhari points out that sterilisation is a popular choice for women because it involves just a single visit to the clinic. For an Intra Uterine Device (IUD), one must return in five years for a check-up.
Data from across the world shows that countries with successful family planning programmes have very low use of sterilisation. According to Argentina Matavel Piccin, the India Representative of the UN Population Fund, the earlier focus on irreversible methods such as sterilisation to reduce fertility rate has been a hard habit to break among healthcare providers. Reversible methods are more conve
nient to use and allow birth spacing between two children. Irreversible methods are for when a couple is done childbearing entirely.
Examples from countries such as Thailand and Bhutan show that providing more choices in birth control to women can help increase contraceptive prevalence rate significantly. Bhutan is an excellent example—the empowerment of women helped lower their TFR from 6.6 in the 1960s to 1.98 in 2018. “The lesson here is that when couples are offered a wide range of choices, they are more likely to use a contraceptive. Further, when couples and individuals have greater access to contraceptives early in their reproductive careers, there is a delay in the age of first childbirth and hence, a wider generation gap,” says Piccin.
Infant mortality rate (IMR) also plays a key role in determining the inclination towards family planning. “Often more children are conceived because the chances of survival are low,” says Choudhuri. In Tamil Nadu, reduction in IMR by improving maternal nutrition helped lower TFR from 2.2 in 1999 to 1.7 in 2016. The latest NFHS-5 shows a reduction in IMR and under-5 mortality rate in nearly all the 17 states surveyed. “It is also extremely important to space out births, mostly for the health of the mother. However, this is often not done; family planning counselling is crucial for couples planning a second child,” says Dr Manisha Singh, senior consultant, gynaecology and reproductive medicine at Fortis hospital in Bannerghatta, Bengaluru.
In 2019, at the International Conference on Population and Development, India pledged to end the unmet need for contraception by 2030, recognising the importance of womencentric family planning policies to tackle population growth. At the same time, it’s equally important to sensitise men towards birth control. Condom usage in India remains extremely low at 5.6 per cent of the population. “To reach our gender and health goals, we must focus on men and boys and encourage an open and inclusive dialogue on sexual and reproductive health,” says Dr S.K. Sikdar, advisor, maternal health and family planning, MOHFW.
Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, an ally of the ruling BJP, has rejected coercive norms for enforcing population control, saying that promoting education among girls is a better plan. In India, the TFR for women who have more than 12 years of education is 1.7, compared to 3.1 for the illiterate. “Experiences from all over the world convincingly illustrate that education, particularly of females, is the most important factor contributing to fertility reduction,” says Prof. T.V. Sekher of the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai, and former Fulbright-Nehru Senior Fellow at Cor
“Global experiences illustrate that education, particularly of females, is the most important factor contributing to fertility reduction” —PROF. T.V. SEKHER
Head of Dept, population policies & programmes, International Institute of Population Sciences, Mumbai
nell University. “Through education we empower women, and this ensures they have the ability and autonomy to take the right decisions about when and how many children they would like to have.”
That’s the consensus among experts—instead of punitive exclusionary measures, focus more on inclusive measures such as spread of education and awareness about family planning, making contraception easy and available, incentivising later marriages and childbirths, and promoting participation of the women labour force. Development remains the best contraceptive method. Short-term electoral gains are the last thing that should dictate any approach to population control.
Is India in danger of losing its demographic dividend?
With nearly two-third of India’s population between 15 and 59—as revealed by the Sample Registration System’s 2018 report—India boasts of a demographic dividend of a young population even as major economies of the world struggle with a declining working age population. India has more working age people than any other country in the world. Its share of the working-age population is set to almost peak by the end of this decade—from 55.8 per cent now to 58.8 per cent in 2031.
The 2018-19 Economic Survey says the working-age population will grow by 9.7 million per year during 2021-31 and 4.2 million per year in 2031-41. “A young demographic leads to a virtuous cycle. More people in the workforce means more people earning, investing, paying taxes, creating demand. Typically, with a young population, consumption spending is higher. It helps the fiscal situation. That is on the presumption that the macro economy is growing,” explains Ajit Ranade, president and chief economist at Aditya Birla Group.
But there are dangers. As more Indians get ready to join workforce, India’s labour participation rate still hovers below 50 per cent, in sharp contrast to
developed countries. For instance, the labour participation rate in the US is 61.6 per cent, in the UK it’s 78.7 and in the EU 56.5. Most economists aver that women’s participation in the labour force plays a crucial role in reducing their fertility rates. The share of women’s participation at work in India was an abysmal 36 per cent in 2021, compared to 64 per cent by men. Worse, instead of increasing in the past decade, it has shown signs of declining.
Even as India struggles to explore the true potential of its demographic dividend, there is a fear that the current focus on population control may dent the advantage in the future. The 201819 Economic Survey also warns that India’s population at the national level and in several states will begin ageing significantly in the next eight years. The share of the young population (0-19 years) could drop to 25 per cent in 2041, from 41 per cent in 2011. In the same period, the share of the elderly population (over 60 years) will double from 8 to 16 per cent. A 2016 research paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research showed that a 10 per cent increase in the share of the 60-plus population reduces the per capita GDP growth rate by 5.5 per cent.
While the size of the working-age population will decline in 11 out of 22 major states, it will continue to rise in states such as Bihar, UP, MP and Rajasthan. These states could meet the labour deficit in states with an ageing population. However, the challenge will be to convert this ‘young population’ to employable manpower. “In Bihar, around one-third of men, and in UP, one-fifth, are illiterate. About 50 per cent men have less than secondary level education in MP and Rajasthan. Again, in UP and Bihar, two-fifths of the males do not even have secondary level education. The situation is worse for women, with around half the population illiterate in Bihar, Rajasthan and UP. At least secondary level education is required for skill development and to enter formal employment. With such depressing levels of education in the major states, we cannot gain from the demographic dividend,” says Professor Unisa.
Arvind Panagariya, former vicechairman, Niti Aayog, and professor of economics at Columbia University, emphasises the need to frame economic policies that boost productivity and eventually quality of jobs. That’s where India’s record has been dismal, in nurturing human capital. Panagariya explains: “With a higher proportion of working age population, what kind of work becomes crucial. I take the view that for productivity, economic policies trump over anything. Do things that will raise productivity, that will improve quality of jobs of people. You are employing such a vast population in tiny little farms.”
The other issue is that India spends only about 3.1 per cent of its GDP on education, while health gets about 1.5 per cent of its total spend. The US spends nearly 17 per cent of its GDP on public health and 6 per cent on education. “India remains deficient in allocations for health and education. When the population begins to age, health requirements will become more,” says D.K. Srivastava, policy advisor, EY India.
In the post-pandemic world, as the two largest economies—the US and China—stand locked toe to toe, India is in a unique position to capture the booming demand and export opportunity. “We can exploit the export opportunity. Our biggest driver is people. We should focus on labour intensive exports—textiles, leather, agro processing, medical tourism,” suggests Ranade. With China’s dependency ratio rising and labour becoming costlier, the time is now ripe for India to capitalise on its demography. More than coercive measures of birth control, what is needed is to educate people, keep them healthy and build an enabling environment for businesses to expand and hire. The key is striking the right balance between population control and keeping the pace of economic growth.
“With a higher proportion of working age population, what kind of work becomes crucial. Do things that will raise productivity, that will improve quality of jobs of people. You are employing such a vast population in tiny little farms” —ARVIND PANAGARIYA
Former vice-chairman, Niti Aayog, and professor of economics, Columbia University
“At least secondary level education is required for skill development and to enter formal jobs. With such depressing levels of education in the major states, we cannot gain from the demographic dividend” —DR SAYEED UNISA,
Head of Dept, mathematical demography & statistics, International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai