But many of the measures are no different from what 12 other states have enacted in the past. These states have barred people with three children from contesting civic polls apart from other disincentives. In Maharashtra, those who have more than two children are not only debarred from government jobs but are also denied benefits of government welfare schemes.
In China, the government found that once fertility rates dropped, they were faced with an aging population. Even after relaxing birth control policies to allow all couples to have two children in 2015, and three children in 2021, birth rates remain low, particularly among the urban middle class favored by the government. China began promoting the use of birth control and family planning with the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949, though such efforts remained sporadic and voluntary until after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976.
Two-child norms ‘anti-women’
As regards disincentives for those found exceeding the norm, they would be debarred from contesting local bodies polls, will not be eligible for government jobs, will be denied a promotion if in service and will not receive any form of subsidies. The program was intended to be applied universally, although exceptions were made—e.g., parents within some ethnic minority groups or those whose firstborn was handicapped were allowed to have more than one child. In addition, enforcement of the policy was somewhat uneven over time, generally being strongest in cities and more lenient in the countryside. The one-child policy was a program in China that limited most Chinese families to one child each. It was implemented nationwide by the Chinese government in 1980, and it ended in 2016.
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- They were taken from hospitals, from homes, from midwives who had been asked to kill them.
- Like in many other Asian countries, including India, it was only aspirational for parents to want more sons.
- Further, when couples and individuals have greater access to contraceptives early in their reproductive careers, there is a delay in the age of first childbirth and hence, a wider generation gap,” says Piccin.
After the implementation of the one child policy, it has alleviated poverty by promoting family planning, holding population growth under control and raising the life quality of the population in those areas. According to the National Bureau of Statistics in China, the poverty proportion in China has decreased from 35% in 1978 to 15% in 1985, and there is a continuous decrease in the poverty proportion (see Fig. 1). As too many births links to economic and cultural backwardness, population in India should be controlled to combat poverty. In 2019, at the International Conference on Population and Development, India pledged to end the unmet need for contraception by 2030, recognising the importance of women-centric family planning policies to tackle population growth. At the same time, it’s equally important to sensitise men towards birth control.
But experts say there is no evidence to suggest that such a law will help in bringing down the fertility rate. Legislation in Uttar Pradesh proposes to make people with more than two children ineligible for government jobs and exclude them from state’s schemes. Union Minister Ramdas Athawale said on Saturday that there should be a one child norm in the country as a measure to control population growth. As more Indians get ready to join workforce, India’s labour participation rate still hovers below 50 per cent, in sharp contrast to developed countries. For instance, the labour participation rate in the US is 61.6 per cent, in the UK it’s 78.7 and in the EU 56.5.
What are the consequences of the one-child policy?
Right-wing Hindu groups have often highlighted the difference between the growth rates of Hindus and Muslims in the state. Between 2001 and 2011, Hindus grew at 2 percent annually while Muslims grew one child policy in india at 2.5 per cent. But the Population Foundation of India (PFI) points out that while the Hindu growth rate declined by 5.6 percentage points during the last two census (2001 and 2011), for Muslims, the decline was even faster, 6.1 percentage points for the same period. According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, population of India is 1.32 billion, hitting the 1-billion mark.
Those gains were offset to some degree by a similar drop in the death rate and a rise in life expectancy, but China’s overall rate of natural increase declined. Data from the Health Ministry’s most recent National Family Health Survey, released last week, showed India’s total fertility rate had dropped to 2.0, below the so-called replacement rate of 2.1 needed to maintain a stable population. In urban areas it was even lower, with an average of 1.6 children per woman.
These findings demonstrate an intensification of the fertility squeeze throughout India, not just in the Northwest. So instead of welcoming a policy to control the state’s burgeoning population, why was there such a storm over Yogi’s announcement? While pushing for a two-child policy per couple, the state plans to introduce both incentives and disincentives to ensure its implementation.
India is among the top 5 countries with the highest carbon emission in the world. China is an example of avoiding excess carbon emission with the population control policy. From the one-child policy, China avoided around 300 million births, meaning she has averted 1.3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2005 based on average world per capita emissions of 4.2 tonnes (Doyle).
Uttar Pradesh Population bill explained: Breaking down Yogi government’s new one-child policy in 15 slides!
Muttreja said two-child norms are known to “disproportionately impact the most deprived and vulnerable, particularly women and girls, who already have little to no access to health and education”. A study published in The Lancet in July 2020 found that continued trends in female educational attainment and access to contraception will hasten the decline in fertility and slow population growth. Muttreja of the Population Foundation of India pointed out the “complete contrast” between the proposed law and the government’s population policy based on a “non-coercive, life-cycle approach”. According to the United Nations Population Division, a TFR of about 2.1 children per woman is called replacement-level fertility, which, if sustained over a longer period, each generation will exactly replace itself. The bill proposes to make people with more than two children ineligible for state government jobs, disentitle those already in service to promotions, and exclude them from the benefits of as many as 77 government schemes.
From controlling population growth, this can help suppress the increasing carbon emission in India. As a result, would help slow down the exacerbating global warming and the consequences that come with it. The decline in population growth rates for Jains (20.5 per cent), Buddhists (16.7 per cent), Sikhs (8.5 per cent) and Christians (7 per cent) was even more steep during the same period. As happened at the height of China’s one-child policy, Indians could lose government jobs and more if such laws were passed at the national level. Some Indian states and municipalities have already legislated that people with more than two children are ineligible for government jobs and to stand for political office.