Sunday, November 11, 2001		Books

BOOK EXTRACT
Population billion: what went wrong

BRITAIN in the 18th and 19th centuries faced the prospect of a population explosion. Malthus in "An Essay on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improve-ment of Society" conjectured, "There would be an ever greater gap between the people’s food demands and the land’s capacity to meet them. The result would be increasing starvation and deprivation, mass deaths through famine and disease and a rending of the social fabric."

Britain, however, escaped the fate that Malthus had predicted. The prediction was falsified due to three important developments. The first was emigration. Nearly 20 million people — one-third of the then population — emigrated not only to the newly found northern part of the American continent, now better known as the USA and Canada, but also to colonies rich in natural resources like New Zealand, Australia and southern Africa. These territories were inhabited by peoples who could not resist invasions. More important than absolute numbers, however, was the fact that they were not obstructed by domestic or foreign authorities from emigrating. This possibility, of course, is not available to India. First, there are no virgin lands left anywhere in the world as were available in earlier centuries. Second even in countries where the population is scanty, Asians, especially people from the subcontinent, are neither welcome nor are they powerful, politically and militarily, to force their entry.

The second development was the agrarian revolution, which introduced new breeding techniques, rotation of crops and the introduction of potato. The new methods raised the quality and quantity of food supply. The increase in domestic food supply was supplemented by food from British colonies and, thus, contrary to the forecast by Malthus "the power in the earth" was able to match the power of population. In the sixties, Indian agriculture witnessed the green revolution leading to an extraordinary possibility of a qualitative and quantitative jump in food supply. A repetition of this possibility, however, seems remote. Of an area of 32.87 crore hectares 13.5 crore is already being cultivated. The requirement of land for purposes other than agriculture such as housing, industry and infrastructure is likely to increase in the future thereby reducing land that can be reclaimed for cropping.

Similarly, improved farming techniques cannot be expected to be adopted instantly in view of all-pervasive illiteracy, absence of a scientific attitude and scarcity of resources among farmers. The only area where some improvement can be envisaged is that of increasing crop intensity through scientific management of water resources, multiple and heterogeneous cropping patterns and dry farming which would, of course, be evolutionary in nature.

The third and the most important development had already taken place just a decade or two before Malthus composed his essay. Between 1760 and 1820, Britain entered the first stage of the Industrial Revolution. There was a big leap forward in productivity which followed from the substitution of mechanical devices for human skills and of inanimate power for animal and human strength. Productivity was boosted to the extent where both national wealth and general purchasing power outpaced the rise in population. During the 19th century as a whole, the British population grew fourfold, the national product grew 14 times. World markets were at the disposal of Britain for its products. Its technology and industry had an evident edge over others, including the colonies. This fact, along with political power, facilitated an unhindered flow of manufactured goods from Britain to other parts of the world.

India has none of these advantages, neither political power nor superior technology. Obviously, the opportunities available to Britain then are not available to India today. Britain created opportunities and economic resources that outmatched the growth rate of its population and so neither faced nor felt the need for a family planning programme. India is not in a position to enhance its limited opportunities and resources to match its increasing population. There is no other choice but to restrict the pace of population growth.

China, until India joined it recently, was the only member of the exclusive club that boasted of a population of more than a billion. Yet, unlike India, it has managed to get better control on the growth rate, basically through a family planning programme which has three key elements: improvement in social development indicators, economic reforms and compulsory family planning through coercive state intervention. This programme was given a constitutional and legal cover through amendments wherever necessary. It was implemented through a remarkably detailed and decentralised organisational network which, perhaps, only a political system such as of China.

The family planning programme adopted by China laid emphasis on measures like (a) late marriage, (b) delayed childbirth, and (c) the one child norm. Economic incentives and benefits like monetary bonus upto the age of 16 years of the child, preferential housing or plot allotment and special consideration for the child in education and employment were offered to encourage the one-child norm. China also paid attention to social and economic programmes such as land reforms, universal primary education and reduction in economic inequalities in the pre-reform era which provided a strong foundation for the successful implementation of the family planning programme.

The Chinese model, however, cannot be replicated in its entirety in India due to its democratic political structure. However, it carries important and significant lessons. First, the development of individual capabilities and reduction of inequalities — economic, educational and gender — merit consideration as these, indeed, constitute the prerequisite for the significant success of any family planning programme. Second, state intervention, even non-coercive, can definitely work as a catalyst to hasten the process of birth control. Third, the market mechanism can be used without the fear of losing political commitments, to bring about all round economic development that will eliminate mass deprivation. The more recent Chinese experience demonstrates, beyond any doubt, that a thriving market economy can help a great deal in lifting the masses out of poverty and improve living conditions.

The third major country to face population problem is India. In the first five year Plan it was held that: "The recent increase in the population of India and the pressure exercised on the limited resources of the country have brought to the forefront the urgency of the problem of family planning and population control. It is, therefore, apparent that population control can be achieved only by the reduction of birth rate to the extent necessary to stabilise the population at a level consistent with the requirements of national economy."

The policy has been consistently pursued and expanded through the years. During the early sixties, the programme was extended by way of offering a wide choice of contraceptives. Which came to be known as the cafeteria approach. A system of incentives was also introduced by offering monetary payments to acceptors, service providers and motivators. In 1966, a separate Department of Family Planning was created in the Ministry of Health, Government of India. In 1978, to emphasise the voluntary nature of the programme, the term family planning was replaced by family welfare. During the eighties, family welfare programme stressed on integrating immunisation, childcare and safe motherhood. Despite these developments and colossal amounts of money spent in setting up a mammoth infrastructure, the Indian family planning programme was less than a success, if not a complete failure, as results never matched targets and always lagged behind.

The ineffectiveness of the programme can be primarily attributed to the fact that the problems of poverty, basic education and public health were not integrated with the family planning policy and, therefore, failed to facilitate acceptance among the masses on voluntary lines. It could reach only those who had access to basic education, minimum level of public health facilities, social security and mass media. Village health guides and multi-purpose workers failed to convey the message of the family planning programme despite their door-to-door campaign largely because of their mechanical approach and apathy to the programme in particular. Obviously, neither receptivity nor response could be built up among the poorer classes.

The basic limitation of the family planning programme was that it was not conceived as an integrated programme of the over-all general planning for the social and economic development of the country. Rather, it was designed in isolation with birth control as its primary goal. Indian planners while determining the long-term objective of planning assessed that the gains of economic growth would percolate and take care of poverty and inequalities while the family planning programme would restrict the numbers side by side. It was not appreciated that economic growth would not benefit all classes in an equitable manner unless it was participative but could aggravate relative poverty and inequality. Reduction in poverty and inequality were mistaken to be inevitable functions of economic growth. It was never realised that effective measures for reduction in poverty and inequality, on the contrary, would actively contribute towards social development and economic growth.?