The Population Growth Rate in India

The Population Growth Rate in India 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 Page 2 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." Page 3 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 Page 4 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, Page 5 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 Page 6 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.