Uttar Pradesh (UP), India's most populous state, home to over 220 million people, proposes denying government jobs, promotions, subsidies and the right to contest local elections to anyone who has more than two children.
Experts say its population growth - like India's as a whole - is already slowing. They warn against a "coercive" two-child policy that denies women agency and further increases unsafe or sex-selective abortions, given the deep-rooted and overwhelming preference for sons. The UP bill for curbing population growth they say contradicts Uttar Pradesh's (UP) population control policy which was also released on Sunday.
"The bill runs counter to an overarching population policy that addresses a wide range of issues including adolescent sexual and reproductive health, child and maternal mortality, and ageing," said Poonam Muttreja, executive director of Population Foundation of India. "UP has an 18% unmet need for contraception - instead of disempowering women further, we should be ensuring that they have access to a wide basket of contraceptive devices," Ms Muttreja said.
India's population is not exploding - on average, women in most states have been having fewer children than before, effectively flattening the growth curve. Fertility rates have dipped below replacement levels - 2.1 births per woman - in 19 out of India's 22 states (Data from the UP, is not ready yet.) Increased awareness, government programmes, urbanisation, upward mobility and greater use of modern methods of contraception have all contributed to this.
"India is at a perfect stage as far as population distribution is concerned," Niranjan Saggurti, director of the Population Council's office in India said.
Experts say India has entered a demographic dividend - the ability of a young and active workforce to catapult economies out of poverty.
UP's fertility rate nearly halved from 4.82 in 1993 to 2.7 in 2016 - and it's expected to touch 2.1 by 2025, according to a government projection.
Given the falling rates, "incentivising sterilisation is counterproductive", Ms Muttreja added, because "70% of India's increase in population is going to come from young people. So, what we need is non-permanent, spacing methods".
Six states - Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh - that are home to roughly 40% of India's population also have fertility rates higher than the replacement level, 2.1. This is in sharp contrast with Kerala (1.8), Karnataka (1.7), Andhra Pradesh (1.7) or Goa (1.3).
"...cities are overcrowded and ill-planned. They convey an image of over-population," Dr KS James, director of the international Institute of Population Sciences, said.
In 2018, more than 125 MPs wrote to the president asking for the implementation of a two-child norm. The same year the Supreme Court dismissed several petitions seeking population control measures as it could lead to a "civil war-like situation". In the last year, three MPs governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) introduced bills in parliament to control the population.
Since the early 1990s, 12 states have introduced some version of the two child-policy. A study in five of the states showed a rise in unsafe and sex-selective abortions, and men divorcing their wives or giving up their children for adoption so they could contest polls. four states revoked the law; Bihar started in 2007 but still has the country's highest fertility rate (3.4); and Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu have all seen a remarkable drop in fertility rates with no such norms in place.
"We need to invest in education and health systems," Ms Muttreja said. "We can learn from Sri Lanka, which increased the marriageable age for girls, or from Bangladesh and Vietnam, which enabled a basket of non-permanent contraceptives to reach women on their doorstep."
Nearly half of the world's countries have seen a decline in fertility rates. By 2070, the global fertility rate is expected to drop below replacement levels, according to the UN. China's fertility rate had dropped to 1.3 in 2020.
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