The Supreme Court has said it might hear a plea on the two-child norm policy. It will give consideration to the rising population in India. The PIL for the same was filed by activist Anupam Bajpai. It is based on the idea India’s rising population is not proportionate to the resources available. The plea is scheduled to be heard sometime this week.
The PIL says that couples who follow the norm should be rewarded through incentives and couples who default should have certain access to resources withdrawn. While the logic behind such a policy might be sound, it wouldn’t work practically. It is true that if this growth rate of the Indian population continues, it will not be sustainable in the future. An increase in population proves to be a massive burden on the country’s natural resources. This is especially true of metropolitan cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, etc. which report high rates of pollution, shortage of resources and even higher rates of population.
The PIL said, “The rapid population growth and economic development in the country are degrading the environment through uncontrolled growth of urbanisation and industrialisation, expansion and intensification of agriculture and destruction of the natural habitat.“
The challenges
The idea behind the PIL is to ‘motivate’ the people to adopt the norm, rather than force them. It also attributes the causes of high levels of pollution to the growth rate. If India were to implement such a policy in India it would be similar to the one-child policy in China. India does have a history of politically controlling the population, Indira Gandhi in the 1970s implemented forced sterilisation. But these policies have a reputation for not being well-received.
Lack of awareness and a bias against contraception in the rural areas make population control very difficult in India. At the local level, many states have implemented the two-child policy but no such policy has been successful at the national level. While this policy which in theory rests soundly on the Malthusian logic of demography, in practice it doesn’t fit, especially when India has proved it wrong.