Population policy or a cosmic prescription?

By S. Swaminathan

There is no question about the National Population Commission being the mirror-image of an overpopulated country. Is the Commission too unwieldy to serve any great national purpose other than as a sammelan of Union Ministers, State chief ministers, political bigwigs, demographers and hangers on? In a democracy what can be more desirable than a platform for a free-for-all on such a grave issue as population explosion? Unless policymakers talk without reservations (and unless a captive audience is assembled at considerable public cost), how can anyone expect such a colossal task as population stabilisation to be effectively addressed?

Immediate outcome

Much as a strategy for population control hinges on a multi- dimensional social policy, the New Delhi meet - the first gathering of the Population Commission - came out with just one ``tangible'' result, the nucleus of a special fund for financing projects targeted at population growth limitation. The seed money of Rs. 100 crores - to be substantially augmented by corporate industry and high-income tax-payers looking around for income-tax rebate - could be mistaken for a break-through in population planning unless it is realised that it is development expenditure (including that on sanitation, health care, education at the primary level and particularly of the girl child) which would eventually make the difference to the total fertility rate.

Another outcome which is patently the manifestation of the ``top- down'' approach to development is that the Centre would set up an ``Empowered Action Group'' in the Union Health Ministry to formulate ``area-specific population control programmes''. There is little doubt that the areas in question are Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Orissa. These are the ''laggard'' States in population control and the message now is that New Delhi knows what is amiss in these States.

According to the Prime Minister, the ''Empowered Action Group'' at the Union Health Ministry, would strive to involve voluntary agencies and Panchayats in the promotion of social marketing of contraceptives. Is this is not a new breeding ground for dozens of Centrally-sponsored schemes which have such a dismal record of derailment? In the Constitutional scheme of things, population control is in the Concurrent List and what the Centre has done now is to tell the ''laggard'' States that they better ''do as they are told'' lest an Armageddon of a population avalanche overtakes the country because of their failure to bring down the fertility rates.

Rather than trust the omniscience of the bureaucrats in Delhi, why should not the ''problem states'' come up with their own strategic thinking on how their high total fertility rates exceeding 3 per cent per year can be brought down? When once this happens, the obsession with ''funding'' as the main barrier to population control might give place to a whole new prioritisation in States such as Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in the area of social and economic development.

Demographic goals

The National Population Policy Document (March 2000) avowedly seeks to steer the Population Policy clear of the accursed ''target mania`` regarding family planning ''acceptance''. However the authors of the document cannot restrain themselves from a statistical trap involved in the projection that ''if current trends'' (in the birth rate, mortality rate and so on) continue, the population estimated at 996.9 millions in 2000 (March?) would increase to 1,162.3 millions in 2010.

It is not difficult to see that this projection itself reflects a fatalistic belief that nothing will change in the rural heartland of India and in the urban slums between now and 2010. A serious flaw in this approach is that it takes no cognisance of economic development impacting positively on social attitudes relating to the size of the family or of the beneficial effects of elementary education being extended to remote rural and tribal communities in such States as Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.

Even more dubious is the anticipation set out in the policy document that ''If the NPP 2000 is fully implemented,'' the size of the population in 2010 will be 1,107 millions as against 1,162.3 millions - the normal expectation. The guesstimates may not by themselves prove the wisdom embodied in the new policy. For after all, the policy is a catch-all omnibus formulation of as many as 14 ''desirabilities,'' listed not as priorities but rather as edicts recalling the age of Ashoka! Says item number 1 of the ''goals'': ''Address the unmet needs for basic reproductive and child health services, supplies and infrastructure.'' Another item, number 8, calls for the achievement of ''universal access to information/counselling and services for fertility regulation and contraception with a wide basket of choices.'' And item number 14 sounds the ultimate note of benediction: ``Bring about convergence in implementation of related social sector programmes so that family welfare becomes a people-centred programme.''

The nub of the whole question of population control is how public policy can draw the line between bureaucratic enthusiasm for ``achievements'' and the creation of an environment where people, especially the poor, become aware that the small family norm is the synonym for social and economic upliftment. That the role of the Government as a provider of funds for the development of basic amenities of civilisation should not be misconstrued even as that of a motivator much less a propagandist for adoption of contraception cannot be overstated. Short of pursuing a laissez faire attitude, the Government needs to accept the reality that population stabilisation cannot be achieved except through rapid economic development and the mainstreaming of the poor through compulsory free education and access to preventive health as a right rather than as a privilege.

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