Numbers surge, so does misery

Rama Kashyap

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She is a mother of seven children — the eldest is around 20 and the youngest not more than five-year-old. The frail woman in early 40s, who has been working for me as a part-time help for the past couple of years, toils hard to support her large family. However, it’s not living but a pitiable existence. Her eldest son is a drug addict. The oldest daughter eloped with a boy who turned out to be an alcoholic and later committed suicide. Now, the daughter is back with two little kids to stay with her parents, eleven of them huddled in a single room.

Oh my God! What a wretched life! Thankfully, they have a roof over their head, courtesy government’s EWS housing scheme. But can any amount of support in the form of subsidised housing, ration and LPG, free education and mid-day meals for the children pull them out of the poverty?

I pity the poor woman and her husband for their hardships and miseries, but can’t help sympathising with the children, who have been pushed into the world of deprivation without a choice. Similar story unfolds at the traffic signals where a family with three-four kids may be seen, one in the lap and another in the womb, making a living on begging. For sure, there are socio-economic factors to explain high TFR (average births per woman) among the poor but still I wonder what right the parents have to bear so many children if they cannot even provide the basic minimum necessities. We keep stressing upon freedom, the right of the people to reproduce, but tend to dismiss the right of the children to a reasonable life, which should ideally be the responsibility of the parents. Stressing upon the need for family planning, Prime Minister Narendra Modi remarked in his Independence Day speech, “Parents in India now need to give a serious thought to whether they will be able to fulfil their child’s dream and aspirations and support a new life.”

The population went up by more than 66 crore between census 1971 and 2011. At present, India’s population is around 137crore, next to China. 

The Prime Minister’s concern and appeal for population control cannot be dismissed. Responsible parenthood is indeed critical to population control.

The author retired as Associate Prof from MCM DAV College