For many years concern has been voiced over the seemingly unchecked rate of population
growth in India, but the most recent indications are that some success is being achieved
in slowing the rate of population growth. The progress which has been achieved to date
is still only of a modest nature and should not serve as premature cause for complacency.
Moreover, a slowing of the rate of population growth is not incompatible with a
dangerous population increase in a country like India which has so huge a population
base to begin with. Nevertheless, the most recent signs do offer some occasion for
adopting a certain degree of cautious optimism in regard to the problem.
One important factor which is responsible for viewing the future with more optimism than
may previously have been the case has been the increase in the size of the middle class,
a tendency which has been promoted by the current tendency to ease restrictions on
entrepreneurship and private investment. It is a well-known fact that as persons become
more prosperous and better educated they begin to undertake measures designed to
eliminate the size of their families. (The
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obvious exception would be families like the Kennedys who adhere to religious strictures
against artificial birth control, but the major Indian religions have traditionally
lacked such strictures.) Ironically, the state of Kerala which had long had a
Communist-led government had for many years represented a population planning model
because of its implementation of programs fostering education and the emancipation of
women. The success of such programs has indicated that even the poorer classes can be
induced to think in terms of population control and family planning through education,
but increased affluence correspondingly increases the pressure for the limitation of
family size, for parents who enjoy good life want to pass it on to their children under
circumstances where there will be enough to go around. In contrast, under conditions of
severe impoverishment there is not only likely to be lack of knowledge of family
planning or access to modes of birth control, but children themselves are likely to be
viewed as an asset. Or, perhaps one might more accurately say with regard to India, sons
are viewed as an asset. We will have more to say later about the relationship between
gender and population growth, but here we may make the obvious point that if a family
seeks sons it may also have to bring into the world some "unwanted" daughters, thereby
furthering the trend towards large families. Under conditions of severe impoverishment,
attended as it has traditionally been by high childhood mortality rates, "it has
estimated for India that in order to have a 95 per cent probability of raising a son to
adulthood, the couple had to have at least six children."
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In general, direct efforts on the part of government to promote family planning have had
only limited success in India. In large part this has been due to the factors which have
traditionally operated in Indian culture and society to promote large families, of which
more will be said later. Here, however, it might be noted that the most common family
planning modes have proven difficult to implement under Indian conditions. Where
government efforts are concerned, "for mass consumption only three methods
are...advocated: sterilization (vasectomy for fathers and tubectomy for mothers), IUDs
and condoms." Sterilization has traditionally met with strong resistance among
uneducated sectors of the population who associate it with loss of virility or
feminimity, and, often being irrevocable, it has been a source of understandable concern
in a society where couples who may already have several children risk losing some or all
of them as a result of such factors as epidemics earthquakes or floods. Resistance to
sterilization has traditionally been strongest among men, Chandrasekhar suggesting that
the prevalence of tubectomies as opposed to vasactomies serving serving indication that
"women are becoming increasingly aware of the problem and want to solve it without
waiting for their husbands to decide on vasectomy."
In regard to IUD, which has been promoted since its introduction in India in 1963, the
method has not proven popular because of the relative frequency of excessive bleeding
and, though more infrequent, involuntary expulsion. Taking note of the fact that in
traditional Indian
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society gynecology, obstetrics and other fields requiring intimate contact and
conversation with women are invariably reserved to female doctors only, Chandrasekhar
observes that "the real problem is the lack of sufficient numbers of dedicated women
physicians who are willing to work in rural areas and spend some time in pre-insertion
and post-insertion follow-up of their patients." The third major mode of
contraception-condom use has seen a marked increase in usage in India in recent years;
however, much of this increase has been due less to family planning concerns but to fear
of AIDS on the part of sexually-active persons, such as prostitutes and their clients,
who could be expected to take precautions against pregnancy anyway. As for the pill, it
still has not proven a major contraceptive mode among the uneducated masses who are most
inclined to have large families.
In addition to long-recognized family planning modes, other factors have been operating
to limit the rate of population growth in recent years. Unfortunately, infanticide of
girl babies has become increasingly commonplace in India, perhaps because the growth in
materialism has led the lower classes to become more and more aware of the
"undesirability" of girls. While the Hindu emphases upon dowery, which can have the
effect of impoverishing a family with many daughters, is no doubt a significant
contributing factor, it should be pointed out that population figures for Pakistan and
Bangla Desh would suggest a prevalence of infanticide of girl babies in these nation as
well, despite the fact that under Islam there has traditionally been no dowery at
marriage but,
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instead, a so-called "bridal price" paid by the family of the groom. Thus, indications
are that Muslims throughout the subcontinent have accepted the Indian cultural
presumption that girl babies are undesirable even though under Islam the bride's parents
theoretically stand to benefit financially. Mahmood Mamdan notes that, in regard to
India, "the preferential treatment of male over female clearly shows in the much higher
infant death rate among females and in the resulting higher ratios of males over females
in general population," adding that "in most other parts of the world, females of a
general population have lower death rates than males." Indeed, except for the Arab all
countries of the Persian Gulf, which offer employment to large numbers of unmarried men
from other areas of the Middle East, the only other countries which display a population
ratio significantly in favor of males on the Indian pattern are Pakistan and Bangla Desh,
where, as has already been noted, the infanticide of female babies presumable also
prevails.
In addition to the elimination of girl babies, either through outright murder or the
denying them food and care traditionally given to boys, abortion, on the basis of
amniocentesis, has been another means of population control where girl babies are
concerned. As in the case of infanticide, the authorities have been largely powerless to
restrict the practice, abortion being for the most part legal in India even though the
use of amniocentesis for the purpose of aborting a healthy female baby is theoretically
against the law. Another means of reducing the "unwanted" girl babies is abandonment to
charitable organizations under circumstances where adoption will
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result. The anonymous abandonment of children to charitable agencies is the another
practice that is illegal but impossible for the government to prevent, for the agencies
understandably hesitate to refuse to accept a child from a parent apparently intent on
abandonment for fear that infanticide will then be resorted to by such a parent. And,
although Indian law requires that an adoption agency give priority to placement with
families within India, the relative paucity of Indian couples seeking to adopt children
insures that virtually all babies given up for adoption will find homes in the affluent
industrialized countries of the West.
We have therefore seen that, while the rate of India's population growth has been
slowing, some of the measures adopted to this end are not of the best. To insure that
comprehensive family planning programs find widespread acceptance considerably more
progress needs to be made in raising the standard of living of the Indian masses for
"although the wealthier, better-educated urban families do curtail their fertility, the
poor have not had the means or motivation to do so." "Most important, perhaps," writes
John Cool, is the fact that thousands of years of Indian experience have shaped cultural
values and social institutions, which encourage the survival of the family and the
community through high fertility. Modernization is slowly changing this situation, but
to insure success considerably more progress needs to be made.
Bibliography
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Chandrasekhar, S. Abortion in a Crowded World: The problem of abortion with special
reference to India (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974).
Franda, Marcus F. (ed.). Response to Population Growth in India: Changes in Social,
Political, and Economic Behavior (New Yew: Praeger, 1975)
Bahnisikha. The Indian Population Problem: A Household economics Approach (New Delhi:
Sage Publications, 1990)
Mandelbaum, David G. Human Fertility in India: Social Components and Policy Perspectives
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974).
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