Every
ten years around the decadal census when data of population growth religion
wise is released, debates often settle around the uncontrolled growth rate of
particular communities. Misreporting by media outlets is also common. The
religion based population growth data collected for the 2011 census was
released as late as Aug, 2015 and a similar debate started doing the rounds.
The rhetorical slogan of 1990s “Hum do humare do aur who paanch aur unke
pachees” find takers even now. The Muslim demography is often explained through
these kind of polemical takes which assumes that a higher birth rate in Muslims
is solely related to their faith.
However
the 2011 data did bring out some positive trends in population growth. The
growth rate is falling all across communities, but interestingly the fall is
most steep in Muslims. The growth rate of Muslims has slowed down from earlier
decades and it was only 0.8%. The gap between the growth rates of Hindus and
Muslims is progressively declining. Despite this, the bogey of unbridled
population explosion of Muslims is used conveniently by political parties and
politicians to wrongfully paint the picture of Hindus as a “dying” race. This
has often helped in creating a panic situation about the imagined risk of a
majoritarian community becoming a minority.
Source: The Indian Express
Such
assumptions have often worked as fuel in formulating policies targeting a
particular community. Patricia and Roger Jeffrey in the article “Saffron
Demography, Common Wisdom, Aspirations and Uneven Governmentalities” published
in Economic and Political Weekly elaborates that some right wing Hindu
politicians spreads pernicious myths about the differences between the
population growth of Hindus and Muslims. Such lies have been repeated so many
times that it has become a part of common wisdom and even in case of policy
makers, any population policy has an underlying tone of curtailing the number
of the ‘demonised’ other.
But
saffron demography has no factual backing. It is often the product of prejudice
against Muslims. Mohan Rao, a Professor of JNU, in his article “On Saffron
Demography” published in EPW is of the view that saffron demography suffers
from serious methodological, philosophical and empirical problems. It is in
fact a set of misconceptions based on assumptions. It overlooks the
heterogeneity of both the Muslims and the Hindus. It is practically ahistorical
and does not look at trends of population over periods of time and other
socio-economic factors which are also responsible for population growth. It also
conveniently overlooks the fact that population growth among Muslims in
Southern India is lower than Hindus in some of the north Indian states.
Source: The Indian Express
The theories based on saffron demography further find resonance in the
speeches of right wing group leaders. In explicit communal speeches, they have
often appealed the Hindu families to reject family planning because there is
already a “demographic war”. VHP leaders have appealed to Hindu women to give
birth to more children for the same reason. There is a tendency to give
communal colour to population explosion and to population policy as well.
In
this context there is a need to mention that the Assam government also
acknowledged population explosion and decided to take steps. The government is
aiming to formulate a specific population policy for the state. To start with
it will give certain incentives to government employees with two children
including reserving seats for them in different educational institutions. Some
local newspapers have also reported that the government will try to restrict
government employment to those who don’t have more than two children. Such
people will also be denied to contest elections in different local self
governments.
There
was an absurd hint that if an employee must go for the third child, he/she
should take prior permission of their superior. Marriage between the age of 18
and 21 years will be considered a crime. Along with this some good initiatives
like opening more girls schools, scholarships for children of such families
which follow population policy were also announced. In a state which loses
precious and limited natural resource every year to natural disasters, scarcity
of resources is a fact and it is often the cause of ethnic clashes. In such a
scenario, a population policy does make sense. But let us stop and take account
of the effectiveness of this policy and if this imposed policy from above was
the best alternative available to government.
To
start with, we need to state that population policy and family planning has
been a part of India’s Five Year Plans and sterilization was one of the most
popular methods employed. However a look at the population control policy
initiated during the Emergency years with targets imposed from above would
remind one of the horrifying experiences that people faced. Young, unmarried
boys were sterilized just to fulfil the targets. The safety precautions were
bypassed. Even decades after that a large number of women died due to failed
sterilization cases. It was only recently that the Supreme Court ruled that all
such sterilization camps should be closed.
Many
other countries follow population policy. The US introduced the Title X Family
Program in 1970 which works for spreading awareness about family planning and
makes family planning services easily accessible. The policy focused more on
people in the lower income group. Indonesia through the Banjar system used
communities to spread awareness. This program saw a lot of success as many
conservative community leaders changed their views and supported family
planning. Bangladesh achieved the lowest fertility rate in South Asia through
welfare assistants who does door-to-door campaign about contraceptives and
provide free contraceptives every two weeks.
In
all the above examples, the methods used have been based on a bottom-up
approach. Information and services is made available at the grassroot level and
the stakeholders are incorporated at every level. Trained health workers should
be employed to take the initiatives. As opposed to this merely imposing
policies from above with punitive measures and exclusivist incentives will
bypass the real problem.
Like
a good ‘populist’ policy, the Assam government’s population policy comes with a
desirable goal of curbing population growth but bypasses the real target group
by focusing on government employees. The target group should have been the
rural lower income groups, the marginalized people living in river islands and
the method should have been disseminating information and making health care
available to these people.
Many
newspapers have candidly stated that these policies aim to curtail the
population of the ‘immigrant’ Muslims for the safeguard of the
indigenous people. A policy seen to target a particular group will fall short
of achieving its goals by alienating these people. Instead of targeting a
particular community, the policy should focus on the higher fertility rate of
Muslims which is also accompanied by a lower literacy, poverty, lack of access
to health facilities, a higher infant mortality etc.
Extreme
poverty forces parents to marry off their daughters at a younger age. This
needs to be stopped by more scholarships for girls’ higher education, better
employment opportunities not by criminalizing parents. A population policy
should address these issues along with focusing on family planning. Or else it
will be nothing more than targeted exclusion and harassment of a particular
community.
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