By Jayashree Jakhade

It is easy to fall for the temptation to look at the population issue as another simplistic arithmetic model. Population control is not just an issue of controlling numbers. There is a fallacy in the general opinion that a controlled population is bound to enhance the living standards.

Sadly, that is not the real story. A look at many developed economies should confirm that population and standard of living need not be inversely related. Though controlled population can be advantageous, it need not ensure higher living standards. For, standard of living is also a function of host of other factors such as government policies, efficient policy implementation and plugging of leakages, among other things.

So, even a large population can lead to better quality of life, as the experience in most nations in the West shows. You cannot deny the correlation between population and standard of living, but it is essential to understand that this correlation cannot be taken for granted.

Population and prosperity
Consider now the example of United States of America (USA). In USA, population has been on an upward trend. Alongside, prosperity is also rising. Today, the West is interested in seeing India’s and China’s population come down. This interest is largely guided by self-interest.

What is this self-interest all about? The West fears that over-populated nations such as China and India have the potential to keep growing until they reach a point of such unbearable tension that they will have to send their people swarming across their borders into relatively less-populated neighbouring lands nearby.

Encouraging births
Today, the Western economies have no national policies to curb population. What they have are policies designed to encourage births and expand population. Consider United Kingdom has a population of just about 50 million. And migration to greener territories such as USA and Australia has been on for sometime here.

Turn to France now. In this economy, a family of three kids gets twice as much as money as a family with no children. Do not forget that Marshal Petain had attributed the collapse of France in World War II to too few children.

In Germany, there is demand for more children and not for computer engineers from India. Russia has a four-month maternity leave and in some Scandinavian countries even paternity leave is sanctioned. Italy and Spain have a problem of stagnating population. Today, Japan is raising its voice against family planning, since it is unhappy with the consequences.

The Chinese experience
The question here however is this: despite the emphasis on population control, why did China’s one-child plan fail? The plan that was formulated was very different from ground realities. In 1957, Mao Zedong proposed that China should have a stable population of 600 million.

But, China’s population today is a staggering 1100 million. There is no unified family planning law in the country. Inter-caste marriages are accepted and there is no bar on the number of child births. Most family planning councils accept bribes and corruption exists in all quarters. There is a persisting problem of floating population which skirts all existing family planning laws.

Unbalanced development
There is yet another issue that needs attention. There are nations in the world which are growing faster than their counterparts elsewhere. This lopsided geographical growth pattern is resulting in massive migration of people across nations. This unchecked migration and influx often ends up in confrontations and even conflicts. So, what the world today needs is a global population policy. Globalisation without a uniform global population policy could have very serious consequences.

Though such a global population policy may not materialise in the near future, India must work for a uniform population policy, at least in South Asia. Today, the fact is that Pakistan and Bangladesh have populations which are growing faster than India’s. That is why 20 million Bangladeshis have already crossed over to India. In the future, when Indo -Pak relations improve, we can expect a similar influx from Pakistan. So, Indian Government should speedily implement its population stabilisation policies until such a time our neighbours too follow a similar population policy.

It is not that the Indian government is unaware about the ugliness of the population problem. No wonder that when the government called an all-party meeting of members of parliament six months ago on the issue of barring those with more than two children from contesting elections, only the CPI and Shiv Sena backed the proposal. All other parties categorically rejected the proposal.

What India should do now is this: stress not so much on medical sciences (as these experiments lead to a lot of side effects) but on education and general awareness to tackle the mounting population problem. Mass public education meetings on the population problem and distribution of informative pamphlets should make Indians realise the consequences of having a huge population.

It is very interesting to look at what Colin Clarke, a noted economist and philosopher, had to say about India: “Population pressure is probably the only force strong enough to overcome the intense conservatism of the Indian peasant. In the unlikely event of family limitation, most of the stimulus to economic development would be removed with it. " He further goes on to add that he knew of several civilisations, including Greek and Roman, that collapsed due to under population but did not know any that died of over-population.

It is not that India cannot tackle the problem and certainly we do not lack any expertise. The tragedy is that our government is not used to getting down to business where there are no monetary benefits. Since there is no money in family planning, politicians look the other way and offer all kinds of apologies for the swelling population.

Policy on right track
There is cause for cheer, however. The National Policy on Population is a step in the right direction. Earlier attempts to control population ended up by merely emphasising physical targets. That is why these attempts ignored the vital aspects of health and education, especially pertaining to girl child labour.

It is heartening that the national policy on population seeks to squarely address these issues. The policy also stresses on making the right kind of investments in social infrastructure as an essential pre-requisite for promoting small-family norms.

A look at the population growth statistics will show that the population growth rate hovered over the two per cent-mark during the Nineties. Recently, this growth rate dropped down to around 1.57 per cent. The target now: to lower it to 1.3 per cent in the next 10 years. For the first time during the Nineties that the crude birth rate declined by more than the crude death rate. Though this is an encouraging sign, since the population has already crossed the billion mark any further addition however small is bound to cause concern.

So, the need to intensify population control efforts has become more acute. And more so because children born earlier are now in the reproductive age group. Thus all efforts have to be made to bring down the total fertility rate to replacement levels.

What we should do now is to experiment on a micro level, wherein specific states and specific socio-economic areas are targeted. As pointed out in the latest policy document, about 12 per cent of the country’s population that has already achieved net replacement levels lives primarily in nine states. The other chunk of 33.5 per cent of the population that is about to reach this mark is confined to 11 states. The areas and population groups that need greater attention can thus be clearly identified.

Unless and until mass education programmes are undertaken, it is very difficult to break the blind belief that children are god-send gifts. No population policy, however farsighted it is, can work as long as such beliefs continue to haunt people.

Success of the new population policy will depend largely on the way it is implemented by the laggard states and the pace of socio- economic development reforms, particularly in the areas of health and education.

Measures such as freezing the number of seats in the Lok Sabha at the current level are essentially facilitators that can dispel the fear of state governments that population control would mean reduction in the number of members of parliament from their states. What is needed now is strong political will to achieve the veritably inseparable twin objectives of reducing the family size and improving quality of human life.

Skewed distribution
India got its independence more than 50 years ago and at that time most of the developing countries were economically in a shamble and their populace was largely uneducated. However, after five decades, some of them like Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan have progressed so far ahead of India.

We cannot criticise India wholly here. For, India has been able to achieve a four per cent growth in its gross domestic product. But, this achievement gets watered down because of a population growth rate which is high at around 2.7 per cent. What this means is that the net growth per capita whittles down to just a little over one per cent per annum.

The situation is more alarming, particularly because there is a skewed distribution of wealth which has increased the gap between the rich and the poor and has accentuated the inequalities in income and wealth.

Of late, close correlation has developed between socio-economic growth and population control strategies. Most developed countries have a negative or zero rate of population growth. So, while the developed world is talking about better consumption patterns, India is still talking about adequate consumption. That means if we are not going to be seriously concerned about runaway population, Indians will not be able to exhibit better and improved consumption patterns.

The message is clear: despite technological advances, India will not be able to get into the fast lane if we are not able to control population with an eye on attaining the qualitative objective of equitable distribution of income and wealth.