The Central government has told the Supreme Court that India is on the verge of achieving a replacement level of fertility rate of 2.1 through various voluntary birth control measures and rejected suggestions to adopt the coercive China population control model, saying such methods cause demographic distortions.
The health & family welfare ministry’s submissions came in response to PIL petitioner Ashwini Upadhyay, who had pleaded that “to have good health; social, economic and political justice; liberty of thoughts, expression and belief, faith and worship; and equality of status and opportunity, a population control law, based on the model of China, is urgently required”.
Advocating strict implementation of the almost-half-a century-old family planning slogan “hum do, hamare do”, Upadhyay had termed population explosion in India as a major cause of poverty, criminal activity and distorted development. He had sought a direction from the SC to the government to frame a law on population control and family planning.
The ministry said, “India is unequivocally against coercion in family planning.” Taking a dig at the China model, which was suggested by the petitioner, it said, “In fact, international experience shows that any coercion to have a certain number of children is counterproductive and leads to demographic distortion.” This is indeed the case, with China’s population graph showing an imbalance between younger, working-age people and older ones needing societal benefits such as pension and healthcare, it said.
25 of 36 states/UTs have achieved fertility of 2.1 or less
The health & family welfare ministry said India is on the verge of achieving a total fertility rate (average number of children that would be born to a woman over her lifetime) of 2.1 by 2025, as set out in the the National Population Policy of 2000 and through the guidance provided in the National Health Policy of 2017.
“India is witnessing a constant decline in the TFR, which was 3.2 in the year 2000 as against 2.2 in 2018. The wanted fertility rate is only 1.8, indicating thereby that couples on an average do not want more than two children.” “As many as 25 out of 36 states/UTs have already achieved the replacement level fertility of 2.1 or less. As per the Census, 2001-11 is the first decade in the last 100 years which has not only added lesser population as compared to the previous one, but also registered the sharpest decline in the decadal growth rate, from 21.5% in 1991-2000 to 17.6% in 2001-11,” it said.
However, 146 districts in seven states - UP (57), Bihar (37), Rajasthan (14), Madhya Pradesh (25), Chhattisgarh (2), Jharkhand (9) and Assam (2) - have shown TFR of 3 and above. These seven states account for 44% of the country’s population. The Centre listed a dozen schemes being implemented to achieve a replacement fertility rate of 2.1 by 2025 and, interestingly, the government gave credit to five schemes announced by UPA-II led by Manomhan Singh. “At present India is knocking at the door of achieving replacement level of fertility, and has made remarkable improvement in reducing maternal and child mortality,” the government said.
