THE SANJAY STORY by Mehta Vinod

Author:Mehta, Vinod [Mehta, Vinod]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-01-23T18:30:00+00:00

Indiri Bachao1

(save your penis)

EVERY SEVENTH PERSON IN the world is an Indian, and by 2001, if the current rate of population upsurge continues, every sixth person will be an Indian.

Newly born children are a recent problem for India. Till 1921 natural forces—epidemics, famine, drought, flood, malnutrition—created a finely balanced holding line: the born roughly equalled the dead. So that in 1922 the birth rate per 1,000 of the population was 48.1 and the death rate was 47.2. The ensuing growth rate of .9 per 1000 was comfortably absorbed.

By 1931 the situation was less happy. The triple benefits of modern medicine, improved hygiene and better diet wiped out nature’s ecological balance. While the birth rate remained 48.1, the death rate dropped to 36.3 per 1,000. In only ten years the population shot up by 28 million.

And from ‘31 onwards the population chart never stood still, instead it deteriorated rapidly as the gap between birth and death rates continued to widen. In 1951 while the birth rate remained constant the death rate had fallen to 27.4, and in 1961 to 22.8 per 1,000.

Ideally, a family planning programme, even a tentative one, should have been launched in the 30s when it became apparent that India would produce more mouths than it could feed. But the British were more concerned with consolidating their own kingdom rather than worrying about mounting hungry native mouths. The raj was minority, white and desperately in need of English babies. Colonial logic saw no need for family planning for the rulers or the ruled.

Expectedly, the population graph continued its relentless upward spiral. The birth rate in 1971 was 39.0 per 1,000 while the death rate was as low as 17.4.

By 1973 the statistics were as unambiguous as they were alarming. India was adding to its population over 12 million people annually2—and this in a way was the good news, for a projection based on this rate of increase predicted a population double by the end of the century. The daunting prospect of a billion bodies jostling for survival looms on the horizon today.

The extraordinary aspect of this frightening situation is that government, bureaucracy, intelligentsia, even ordinary middle class people, are aware of the enormity of the problem facing the nation. In fact, mouthing the value of planned parenthood has become something of a truism today.

For years now editorials have been written, seminars held, ministerial speeches made, international conferences hosted, White Papers issued emphasizing the do-or-die urgency of a speedy, well-orchestrated family planning programme in India. Incredibly, figures bandied around in an effort to shock and jolt only serve to bore or amuse: India acquires each year the total population of Australia, 60,000 babies are born every day; the number of people living in Bombay city are more than the number of people living in Norway, if Indians stood shoulder to shoulder in a single line it would stretch from Lucknow to Luxembourg… and so on.

A French economist returning home after a three-month tour of India expressed his exasperation thus:

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