NEW DELHI, India —If the autonomous National Commission on Population (NCP) has its way, the target- and coercion-free population policy the Indian government adopted two years ago will be soon replaced with one that enforces sterilization and a target based on a two-children-per-family limit.

“The nation cannot wait for the people to be educated and reduce the size of their families themselves,” said NCP Secretary Krishna Singh in a May 10 interview justifying the intensive campaign the NCP launched recently, which she said is intended to make the public and the government aware of the urgent need to have clear targets to curtail population growth.

The impact of the NCP campaign is already visible in the Indian media. “The population time bomb: India has to curb the net reproduction rate if it wants to avoid disaster” read the headline of a May 19 feature article in the national English daily Indian Express. Similar stories have followed thanks to the NCP, created two years ago “to review and monitor” population growth in India.

The NCP's determined campaign for a review of the population policy is “certainly not a good sign as far as the Church is concerned,” said Archbishop Vincent Concessao of Delhi, the senior vice president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India.

“The people who treat human beings as mere numbers are now asserting themselves once again,” Archbishop Concessao said. In fact, he said, there is “scant respect for human life and human dignity” behind a population policy that would make officials duty-bound to realize sterilization targets and force couples to have only two children.

“We believe that the size of the family is a matter that should be left to the couple to decide,” the archbishop said. “Human beings should not be treated as commodities in a market, the entry of which is regulated by the government.”

More than 15 million babies are added annually to the Indian population, which crossed the 1 billion mark in May 2000. While the population growth rate in developed Indian states has reached replacement level (2.1 children per couple), in more populous states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar it is almost double, according to a recent countrywide population report brought out by the commission.

Focus on Development

Asserting that “development is the best means for population growth stabilization,” Archbishop Concessao cited the example of the southern state of Kerala, which has achieved the lowest population growth rate in India without any coercion or targets. The most literate state in India, with a literacy rate of 91%, Kerala's population of 29 million grew by only 9% during 1991-2001, compared with the national growth rate of 21%.

Instead of frittering away billions of rupees for population control for nearly half a century, Archbishop Concessao added, if the government had tried to ensure basic development of the people and equitable land distribution the population growth rate would have stabilized in all parts of the country.

Even NCP secretary Singh admitted that the 58 billion rupees ($1.2 billion) earmarked last year for promoting family planning through contraceptives had gone down the drain without much impact. In such a situation, Singh said, “the best option before the government is to set clear targets to stabilize the population growth.”

That viewpoint is precisely what worries the Church.

“Our joy has been short-lived,” said Father Alex Vadakkumthala, secretary of the Indian bishops' Commission for Health Care Apostolate. “We were quite happy when the government virtually reversed its earlier tough postures on population control with the policy of 2000. Now the situation seems to be going back to square one.”

The 2000 population policy was a total disappointment for the population control lobby. That policy, the government said, was based on “just, humane and effective development policies” highlighting the steps to improve the quality of life with better health awareness and by improving the national literacy rate, which at that time was more than 60%.

Abortion

Certainly the target- and coercion-free population policy was a “positive deviation” —as far as the Church was concerned —from the target-oriented family planning program India had followed for decades. The first country in the world to launch a full-fledged family planning program in 1951, two decades later India also legalized abortion under the euphemism “medical termination of pregnancy” with hardly any conditions attached.

Since then abortion has been promoted as a means for population control by the government and any pregnant woman —married or unmarried —can go to a private doctor for an abortion, while government hospitals will do one for free. That explains the numerous billboards on roadsides that advertise competitive rates for abortions by private medical practitioners. This practice culminated in the Indian parliament adopting in 1995 the Maternity Benefits (Amendment) Bill, which provides to government and industrial employees six weeks paid leave for those who have abortions after two children.

Since the late 1990s, several states have jumped on the bandwagon of adopting coercive measures to punish large families under pressure from population control lobbies. The western Maharashtra state enacted a bill last year imposing a ban on those with more than two children from becoming office bearers of the lucrative cooperative societies. Also, those with more than two children are ineligible to contest village and municipal elections.

Similar legislations in large and more populous states such as Gujarat, Rajastan and Madhya Pradesh have already stripped families with more than two children of their right to vote, housing loans, government jobs and even admission to government-run educational institutions.

“The Church in India has not made enough protests” over such anti-life measures by the government in the name of population control, Archbishop Concessao said. “We certainly need to do much more.”

The archbishop recalled the “black events” of the “national emergency” during 1975-77, when overzealous target-bound health officials forcibly sterilized thousands.

When asked whether the new policy would see a repeat of those events, NCP secretary Singh said India has moved forward since the 1970s, when gross human rights abuses were reported in the name of population control. However, she added that there was no point in speaking about rights when families keep producing dozens of children.

When the population control experts speak such language, Archbishop Concessao said, “we have the duty to make the people aware of the danger of following an anti-life population policy that would sacrifice human life under the false propaganda of economic prosperity.”

Anto Akkara writes from New Delhi, India.