Why population bill will be a failure and what are the alternative steps government can take to achieve population control.
The question asks about the disadvantages or cons of population control bill
Since many people here have focused only on advantages, I would like to highlight the other side of the population control bill irrespective of whether it is a one-child or two-child policy:
- Increase in Female Foeticide: It’s well-known that Indian society always prefers male child over female child, so bringing a population bill can lead to an increase in illegal sex-selective abortions and it’s the female child who will most likely be aborted.
- Disparity in sex ratio: India already has a bad sex ratio — Almost 108.8 males per 100 females so if there is an increase in sex-selective abortions of the sex ratio will most likely fall to worse.[1]
- Abandoning children: When sex-selective abortions are not possible and couples end up giving birth, they end up abandoning the child by leaving them in streets, railway stations or sending them to orphanages.[2]
- Families would end up registering their children to their relatives: To enjoy the benefits given by the government for following the one-child or two-child policy, families would end up registering their children to uncles and aunties. For Example: if there is a 3rd child born to the couple then in the official documentation, the name of the father and mother of the 3rd child will not be his/her biological parents but some other blood relatives. This is done to avoid contravention in accordance with the policy.
- Birth tourism: To escape this policy, people would tend to migrate to different states or countries where the population control bill is not enforced. This criterion is enough to prove that population control bill will be ineffective in the longer run.
- Financial burden on government: Government has to spend a bulk of money for enforcing these policies and procedures of the policy and even after getting fines from the defaulters, the government would not be able to recover the amount of money it spent on this policy.
So what is the solution to these problems? Can we control population without any population control bill?
The answer is ‘Yes’
- By improving women education level and women empowerment.
- By improving the standard of living — It leads to an increase in the cost of living and it compels the couple to have lesser children.
- By rapid urbanization and industrialization — It is the best contraceptive for controlling the population.
- Take an example of Singapore. It used to be a poor country in 1960 where a majority of the citizens used to live in slums and GDP per capita of 560 USD. But due to rapid urbanization by policies of the first prime minister, the nation became one of the four Asian tigers based on trade and also became one of the highly developed countries with a GDP per capita of 65000 USD.
- When the above happened, the TFR of Singapore fell from 5.76 in 1960s to 1.2 in 2020.[3]
Let’s hope the government take note of all this before rolling out this policy so as to avoid irreparable damage just like how it happened to one-child policy of China.[4][5]
