Something like a War

Something like a war

The movie is an account of the overzealous effort with which Indian state went for population control in the mid 70's, its consequences and the anguish it caused to millions of Indian women who were ultimately the soft target of the whole exercise.

India completes its 60 years of independence in 2007. She is a young nation of one billion plus people with its share of problems. Being a developing nation, we have shortage of resources and a large growing population stresses them further. No one can dispute the need to moderate and stabilize the population to utilize the national resources better and have an improved standard of living for its masses. But how we go about achieving that is important for success and of concern to its inhabitant.

The Indian state was the first state in the world with its mass media campaign to have a family planning policy which went into effect in the 1950’s. Since then we have doubled the population in absolute terms. So what went wrong in the policy? Was it the lack of willingness or the disarrayed efforts of the government?

I believe we spotted the issue early on, but the approach failed to take into consideration the sensitivities of India culture and society. The comprehensive policy of population control failed to realize the importance of economic, educational and social welfare of the people, especially the women. The neglect of these issues ensured that there was never an acceptance to government policies and it was always “Us Versus Them”.

Historically, we have been a nation which has had strong religious and cultural roots and with strong belief in destiny. People were traditionally living in villages and rural parts as self sufficient group with minimal support from the state. There was lack of infrastructure like road, schools, drinking water supply; no state support for agricultural produce and marketing, health facilities etc was the norm. Under such conditions, people developed traditional mode of culture and living. Men evolved to have traditionally stronger role in family by providing the family and taking important decisions. Women were relegated to handling the daily chores of the family and giving birth especially male children who were important to sustain the family lineage. Male children were supposed to provide for the parents in sickness and old age. Under such primitive conditions and lack of resources, average life of people, mortality rates of children and fatality rates of mother were very high. Girls and boys were married early in life when they were physically more able to withstand the vagaries of nature. And having large number of children was considered better given the low life expectancy rate.

With this background, while the state wanted to contain population, the approach it followed was more of drastic measure of sterilization rather than soft measures like education of masses, rights and uplifting of women status, developing health facilities etc. Personally living in a democratic nation, I would also reject a decision which was imposed on me. With doctrines of Malthusianism becoming the