Essays

INDIA possesses 2.4 per cent of the total land area of tile world but it has to support about 16 per cent of the total world population. J With fast expanding population, education acquires a vastly different role. Leaders have talked about the perils of population explosion. But there has never been any real effort al changing the nature of education in India la cope with the threatening dangers that we are ^f swimming in. The decennial increase in population from 1991-2091   | is I S.I crores, equivalent to total population of Canada, France and Germany. We can’t afford such increase in population.

The Indian population can roughly be divided into three broad categories. Firstly, there are the large ignorant masses of illiterate and semi-literate people remain unconscious of the alarming consequences of their multiplications and additions. They are even not aware of various modes of family planning’s. Some them not seen or heard about the condom and how it is used. Secondly, there are th educated but communally inclined who may be able to think, but their thought mi) never go beyond their personal, religiously or socially fashioned ideas of what the ideal size of a family ought to be: the male child is a vital necessity to continue the lineal of the family, or clan. For them, using of any mode of family planning is irreligion^! , unethical and immoral.

 Then there is the third category: the urbane class with the elite class at its apex. This category is well conscience to the necessity of family planning and they tap their family within limits.

 In the early 1950s in India, women gave birth to an average of six children. The  country faced a demographic time bomb and India was the first country to attempt to control population growth.

 Haifa century later, the birth rate has been halved, but the massive population is still the number one problem facing India. With the population still increasingly figure equal to the entire population of Australia every year, it is accepted India attempts to stabilize it have already failed ;

Aasthah is nearly three and a half. She lives in the suburbs of Delhi with ha' parents and grandparents and she is very famous. When she was boom in the year 2000, she became the official one billionth Indian.

Despite government attempts to check India 'population growth, since Aastfali was born, it has continued its inexorable climb to about 1.05 bn today. This has happened most rapidly in areas like the so-called Hindi Belt - the central, predominantly Hindi-speaking States. In the small town of Dadri in Uttar Pradesh, down an alleyway off the main street and behind some shops, is the home of Mohammed Omar and his wife, Aasiyah Begum. This couple has not taken the population control message to heart. They have 24 children. Aasiyah Begum has given birth to 29 children she thinks, but five have died.

She says, "Birth control is against her religion - Islam "and adds, "It's a sin haven operation. No prayers would be said at my grave when I die. Only people with serious health problems can have operations."

Population expert Usha Rai says, "India still lacks a coherent approach to holding back the population explosion and knowledge about basic birth control techniques is woeful." She says: "There are lots of people who haven 'I heard of the conform. I know of a person in Meghalaya who said he'd never heard of condoms, he knows how they were used; he didn’t 'I know where to get them from. This is s major problem in India.

Our policy makers should first and foremost be conscious that the needs of our education are different from the needs of the more technologically advanced nations if for no other reason than the fact that the latter are not baffled by the hazards of over- population. Whereas they need 1 it racy and education in the general sense of the terms, we need to cope with the mess we have procreated. Our education must be tailored to help our people learn to think independently and prepare for the particular kind of plight they have been born into.

 A variety of quick fix Western 'scientific' techno-managerial solutions have been devised to control the fertility of the proliferating masses of the world. This highly coercive strategy is being operated through the health departments of the developing countries against the 'eligible' female. This is strongly promoted by international agencies with massive funding for such programmes through the national governments. This has nevertheless failed to achieve the targets.

In the absence of a concomitant desire to promote the social and economic development and welfare, the poor realize that it is children who provide them the only source of love and economic security in an increasingly hostile world. The increasing population, despite such single-minded coercive programmes for control of their fertility shows how a programme designed by the' haves' to serve their own interests cannot inveigle the poor who devise their own methods for evading what they know goes against their overall welfare.

Forceful implementation, especially against the male during the emergency, even led to the overthrowing of a government. This has resulted in more benign sounding strategies and programmes like IUD, immunization, MTP, Maternal and Child Health, leproscopic tubectomy,' non-scalpel' vasectomy, Norplant inject able contraceptives and vaccines, combined with crude incentives and disincentives for their acceptance. The change of name of these basically medical solutions for what is essentially a social problem into heavily externally funded 'Family Planning' and 'Family Welfare' programmes has not only failed to entice the poor to control their fertility but has also affected the Primary Health Care programme through which it is carried out. In the process it has also disrupted the medical and health services which serve the needs of the poor.

 No amount of mere changing the names of the programmes or of the projects/ activities can convince them that there is a change of heart. This can be achieved only by visible improvement in the fields like education, health and rural development. The close association between poverty, family size and population is observed not only in underdeveloped and developing countries as at present, but was also observed in countries like the UK. During the early days of the industrial revolution. Over- production is nature’s method for ensuring survival of the species. This is also demonstrated in our northern states as compared to those of the South. It is also seen within each state between the reproduction rate of the rich and poor, which is concealed by aggregate statistics.

The intimate connection between education of the female and family size can be achieved at an economic level which is within the reach of most countries of the world. Education of the female is desirable not only for population control but even more so for its own sake as it initiates a cascade of other social and economic changes. The care of much of the health and medical functions including family size lies within her capacity and can be achieved more cost effectively in an accessible and humane manner. Health and medical care can serve only as a vehicle for reaching technology to those who desire to voluntarily limit the size of their family.

 The regulation of family size cannot be imposed as a national programme by political fiat. Their role is to create the climate and opportunity for demand and utilization of reproductive technology. Overall, social and economic development is the prerequisite for the control of population. This is feasible well within our existing resources if these are distributed in a reasonably equitable manner. The prime requirement for this is the political will, which is unfortunately dominated by a selected few.

 In Feb. 2000, the Union Cabinet approved the national policy on population, in order to promote the stabilization of the country's population. The merits of this policy is that it is more broad based than the earlier policies. It stressed the need of empowerment of the poor to check population growth. The policy document of 2000, asserts that since 33% of the elected Panchayat seats are reserved for women, so representative committees of Panchayat headed by elected woman representative should be formed to promote a gender sensitive, multi sartorial agenda for population stabilization, that will think, plan and act locally, and support nationally.

Two days "Colloquium on Population Policy Development and Human Rights" held in New Delhi in January 2003. adopted a declaration, which called for population policies to be a part of the overall sustainable development goals. The declaration noted with deep concern that the policies of certain State government reflects a coercive approach through the use of incentives and disincentives. It emphasized that in a situation where the status of women was low and preference for a son was prevalent, coercive measures further undermine the status of women and resulted in harmful practice such as female infanticide or female feticide.

It is necessary that people should realise the importance of population control visa vis the development of the country. They must understand the simple logic, that the limited resources of a family are ideally shared when there are only two children.

We should breed in our children the fear of overcrowding by coining new maxims like "two is a crowd" instead of "two for joy". We can say "one for joy". A phrase like "crowded, cabined, cribbed and confined" would also help. Similarly a nursery rhyme like "There was an old woman who lived in a shoe, she had so many children, she didn't know what to do,'' should be more useful than an ordinary one like "Where are you going to my pretty maid ?"

 More the number of children, greater the strain on the family budget. So every person, every family needs to participate in the Population Stabilization movement. Every citizen must share the concern that all our precious gains earned become losses if there are more mouths to feed. It is an imperative duty of every citizen to interact with those in their villages or slum or surroundings, that everyone stand to reduce it to smaller families, norms are adopted, accepted, voluntarily, willingly, happily.

 Vocabulary

1. perils—danger, hazard, jeopardy. 2. cope—venture, take a chance, hazard, chance, brave, risk. 3, ignorant—unconscious, uninformed, unknowing. 4. vital—essential. contribute, indispensable. 5. lineage—forefathers, ancestors, genealogy. 6. unethical— unscrupulous, unprincipled, immoral. 7. elitist—highbrow, mandarin, brahmin, stuffed shirt, prig. 8. suburbs—vicinity, locality. 9. inexorable—unyielding, inflexible, obdurate. 10. coherent—consistent, identified, combined. 11. woeful—full of woe. mournful, miserable. 12. baffled—confused, puzzled, perplexed. 13. hazards—risk, peril, jeopardy. 14. plight— impasse, dilemma, situation, tight situation- 15. proliferating—growing, developing, maturing, multiplying. 16. concomitant—accompanying, attendant, connected, coactive. 17. hostile—antagonistic, hateful, opposed. 18. convince—prove, prove to, persuade, Induce, establish, 19.prerequisite—essential, required, expedient 20. coercive— vigorous, cogent.