Population explosion in the country: How much population control law is needed?

 Population explosion in the country: How much population control law is needed?

Union Minister Prahlad Singh Patel on Tuesday said that India will be soon have a law for population control soon.

When asked by reporters about a law on the population at an event in Raipur, the food processing production minister said, “It will be brought soon, don’t worry. When such strong and big resolve have been taken then the rest too .”

He had introduced a private bill on population control in 2016.

India is the world’s second-most populous country with more than 1.4 billion public based on projections of the newest United Nations data. Interestingly, the population growth has slowed down over the last few years. Yet, it is growing faster than China and is await to surpass the neighbouring nation by 2026, when both will be have about 1.46 billion people. By 2030, India is await to become the most populous nation in the world, according to World Population Review. The talk of population control has been a part of politics for decades. We take a look at attempts made to curb the growing digit in the nation .

A possible population control law

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Over the years, leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have been pushing for laws on population control.

BJP Rajya Sabha MP Rakesh Sinha introduced the Population Regulation Bill, 2019 in July that year. It proposed several comfort such as housing subsidies, income tax rebates, travel subsidies, fitness insurance comfort and others for those families with two children where either spouse has undergone sterilisation. It also sought to enforce a two-child rule with penal provisions for violation.

Sinha had said while he didn’t use the words Hindu or Muslim in his bill, one must be not hesitate to use “facts” while discussing an issue. “Using the words Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Parsi don’t make it unconstitutional,” he had said. “Between 1901 and 2011, the Hindu population has reduced by 13.8 per cent, while the Muslim population has increased by 9.8 per cent. This is a fact. I don’t want to comment on whether this increase is good or bad, but you can’t turn away from facts,” he had said. Many leaders from the ruling party have in the past expressed similar views. even so , data from the National Family fitness Survey shows a drop in the fertility rate in the country, the sharpest decline is among Muslims. even so , the section fertility rate, even so , remains the highest among all religious communities in the nation followed by Hindus.

The private Bill was withdrawn in April 2022 behind Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya opposed the compulsory two-kinds rule proposed, saying that instead of using force, the authority had successfully used awareness and health campaigns to achieve population control.

Withdrawing his bill, Sinha expressed confidence that “we will be able to control our population, rising more than caste, religion, speech and district”, on account of serious efforts being undertaken by the authority in this regard. “Our (government’s) efforts are being undertaken in a constitutional manner. We do not want to repeat the Emergency,” he said.

thought , Sinha is not the first leader to propose a law to check India’s growing population.

Prahlad Singh Patel’s 2016 bill had proposed that the permission of the authority  must be made mandatory if anyone wanted to have a third kinds . He as well as advance that welfare comfort be denied to those with a third kinds .

There have been heated debates in Parliament for years over India’s population issues . The two-kinds policy has been tabled over 35 times since Independence but has failed to on coning a law.

Measures by states

Public fitness in India remains a state subject and some state authority have introduced measures for population control.

Several states, including Assam, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh have some form of the two- kinds norm in place for those running for elected authority  posts or authority  jobs, according to a report in India Spend.

In September 2017, the Assam Assembly passed the “Population and Women Empowerment Policy of Assam’’, and that specified that candidates with two kinds would just be eligible for authority  employment and the existing authority  workers were directed to follow the two-kinds family norm.

From January 2021, the state policy that made authority  jobs out of bounds for public with more than two kinds in Assam came into force.

In July 2021, Uttar Pradesh’s law commission came up with a proposal where any person having more than two children will be barred from getting authority  subsidies. The draft bill has been give to the Yogi Adityanath authority  .

The first population policy

Even ahead the BJP, the population explosion was a concern for the Congress..

Much ahead the Emergency, the US authority  began to pressure Indira Gandhi to implement an aggressive policy to nation India’s growing population, and that Washington saw as a threat to “trade and national safety ,” according to a report in Quartz.

India was all time the first in the world to attempt to control its citizens’ fertility on a large scale, and yearly result focused on women, in sync with the international birth control movement. By the 1960s, even so , the authority  had already started to redirect its family planning efforts toward men, the report said.

Then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi gave the slogan “hum do humare do” to the nation and started a nationwide awareness drive.

even so , during the Emergency things went too far. In 1976, when the Indian Constitution was suspended, mass sterilisation drives were held all round the nation . The campaign was helmed by Sanjay Gandhi, the son of Indira Gandhi, where men were sterilised without their consent. Police reportedly cordoned off villages and virtually dragged men for surgeries.