Population control: A flawed solution to an imaginary problem?

In recent times, the discourse around coercive population policies have gained momentum in the country. Such legislations disqualify people from availing of government subsidies and other benefits or contesting elections for political office if they have more than two children. While the central government disavows coercion and does not mandate a two-child policy, in recent weeks Uttar Pradesh and Assam have moved towards this direction. The draft bill proposed by the UP Law Commission on July 7, 2021 compels couples to limit their families through a series of incentives and disincentives.

The two-child norm draws inspiration from the Chinese experience. China had a one-child policy as a state law for 35 years till the country was forced to lift it in 2015 because rapidly falling fertility risked significantly undermining its future economic growth, and a large male-to-female imbalance at birth. It was followed by a two-child policy which did little to mitigate the problems. This policy was lifted in 2021, when the Chinese government announced that it will allow all families to have up to three children.

China now finds itself in the midst of a population crisis. It is currently trying to contend with a changing demography — a growing burden of an ageing population and a shrinking workforce, while encouraging young people to have more children. The ageing of China’s population represents a crisis because its arrival is imminent and inevitable, because its ramifications are huge and long-lasting, and because its effects will be hard to reverse. India must learn from China’s failed experience with enforcing coercive population policies.

India was the first country in the world to institute a National Family Planning Programme in 1952. India is a signatory to the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) Programme of Action that commits to a target-free and voluntary approach to family planning. Further, the National Population Policy 2000 clearly lays out a non-coercive strategy. This strategy is echoed in Uttar Pradesh’s own Population Policy 2021-2030, a document that was released on July 11, 2021 — the same day the draft population control bill for the state was also introduced.

All available evidence shows that a target-free approach which promotes women’s empowerment, health and education has been successful in reducing fertility rates and stabilising the population. As projected by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), India is expected to reach its peak population of 1.6 billion by 2048, followed by a steep decline bringing the population to 1.1 billion and total fertility rate (TFR) to 1.3 in 2100 — roughly total fertility rate is the number of children a woman is expected to have in the course of her life. This study attributes advancements in female education attainment and access to contraceptives as major contributors to the decline in fertility and slow population growth. Additionally, women’s participation in labour force plays a key role in determining the TFR.

Demographic transition is already under way in India. India’s TFR has declined substantially from 3.2 in 2000 to 2.2 as per the 2018 Sample Registration System. More recently, data from the first phase of the National Family Health Survey, 2019-20 (NFHS-5) suggests that of the 17 states and 5 Union Territories (UTs) surveyed, only Bihar, Manipur and Meghalaya are yet to achieve a TFR of 2.1 or less, implying that most states have already attained replacement level of fertility, which is defined as the rate at which the population replaces itself from one generation to next.

Also Read | Does India need population control? UP draft policy begs the question

According to NFHS-4 (2015-16), Uttar Pradesh has a TFR of 2.7, which is above the replacement level of TFR. The Technical Group of Population Projections, constituted by the National Commission on Population under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, has projected in July 2020 that UP will achieve replacement level of TFR by 2025, without any need for coercive policies.

In fact, a five-state study by Nirmala Buch, a former senior Indian Administrative Service officer, found that in the states that adopted a two-child policy, there was a rise in sex-selective and unsafe abortions; men divorced their wives to run for local body elections, and families gave up children for adoption to avoid disqualification. As per NFHS-4 , while UP’s sex ratio for the overall population is 995, the sex ratio at birth for children born in the last five years is 903 girls for every 1,000 boys. The data clearly indicates an alarming trend in sex-selective practices in the state. Stringent population control measures will potentially lead to an increase in these practices and unsafe abortions, given the strong son-preference in the country.

All of this then begs the question, that if there is no population explosion, what exactly are the two-child policies and draft bill proposed in Assam and Uttar Pradesh aiming to achieve?

If the assumption is that “certain” communities require population control measures, then that too is not backed by evidence. The TFR for UP’s Muslim population has fallen more dramatically compared with any other group. The most significant impact of a two-child norm will be on the poor and already vulnerable communities, particularly women, regardless of caste or community, who already have little to no access to health services, including family planning and education. Disincentives that deny schooling benefits, rations, employment opportunities and political representation will only exacerbate the already stark inequities. Revoking benefits when the poor have been hardest hit by the Covid-19 pandemic will bring even more hardship.

Economic and educational status are a far more robust indicator of the number of children that a woman will have than religious belief. According to NFHS-4, 2015-16 data, the TFR among women in India with 12 or more years of education is 1.7 in comparison to women with no education where it is 3.06. Similarly, the TFR in the highest wealth quintile is only 1.54 in comparison to 3.17 in the lowest. Rather than a two-child policy that is anti-women, anti-child and anti-poor, we would do well by learning from Kerala. Investments in women’s empowerment, employment opportunities, education and health system strengthening has brought down overall TFR for Kerala to 1.6 in 2015-16.

Today ‘population explosion’ is an imaginary problem. The real issue here is the unmet need for contraception, which in UP is substantially higher at 18% in 2015-16, in comparison to the national average of 13%. Women with unmet need for family planning want to access contraception but aren’t able to do so due to various barriers. Global evidence shows that expanding contraceptive method choice increases contraceptive use and continuity, enabling more women and couples to take decisions over their fertility — preventing unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions, spacing their children and realising their desired family size. For example, in Bangladesh and Indonesia, both Muslim-majority countries, population growth has decreased by increasing the basket of choices and making family planning easily accessible and available.

Going forward, our focus should be on keeping girls in school and helping them attain their educational goals, increasing access to high-quality family planning and reproductive health services, addressing violence against women and girls, improving the health and well-being of families and creating opportunities for workforce participation. Only then will we achieve population stabilisation while simultaneously ensuring the health and well-being of all Indians.

(Poonam Muttreja is Executive Director, Population Foundation of India)