One Child Policy: A Way Forward Or Not

In Maharashtra, too, candidates are disqualified from contesting local body elections (from gram panchayats to municipal corporations) for having more than two children. The Maharashtra civil services rules also bar a person with more than two children from holding a post in the state government. Women with more than two children are not allowed to benefit from the public distribution system.

Nobody will have more children just because politicians are asking. If a woman chooses to stay at home and take care of her family, she is called a housewife, and even that I am told is seen as a derogatory term now. So we are trying to come up with new terms like “homemaker.” But why should we be ashamed of this role? A woman who spends her time and energy raising a healthy family and maintaining a stable home with sound finances is making a valuable contribution. In about 20 years, the working-age population will be much smaller than it is today.

These calls have less to do with demographic reality, and more to do with majoritarian Hindu nationalist concerns around Muslim and “lower-caste” fertility. In 2019, the previous BJP government decided that those with more than two children would not be eligible for government jobs from January 1, 2021. In 2011, the law reforms commission headed by former Supreme Court judge VR Krishna Iyer recommended the two-child norm in respect of certain provisions in Kerala women’s code bill. The commission suggested providing a norm for restricting the number of children in a family to two, and that any movement, campaign or project which would stand against the said norm would attract a penalty.

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The only union territories excluded are Andaman-Nicobar and Lakshadweep. The analytical sample consists of 33,524 women with a complete fertility history. At the same time, deeper analysis of fertility and mortality statistics from IHDS compare well with NFHS-III conducted around the same time (Desai et al. 2010). By focusing on women with at least one child, we take into account primary sterility (ADD FN ON UNISA WORK).

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This paper is giving an overview on previously performed research how family-planning-policies in China (explicitly the so-called One-Child-Policy) have affected economic growth since 1979. Family-planning-policies have implications on economic growth and economic growth has implications on population growth. An interesting ethical question is, if it is allowed and desirable to limit human rights (sexual and reproductive rights) to promote decent life and economic development. China decided 32 years ago to implement a rigorous family-planning policy and they will still be affected by this decision during the coming years. The policy first enhanced economic growth through a lower dependency ratio, which even led to the opening of a demographic window.

The second category includes aspirations for social mobility through the advancement of one’s children. This requires resources and, even for middle class families, larger families lead to a greater dilution of these resources. Although marriage ages have risen, this increase is nowhere near as rapid and to as high ages as in East Asia. Mean age at effective marriage is about 21 years and 80% of the 15+ female population is married (Government of India 2013). So, as in the comparison with low fertility Europe, the one child family is unlikely to be an unplanned outcome of rising infecundity with age. A deliberate retreat from childbearing is arguably the central component of the second demographic transition (SDT) in Europe and is what the theorizing on the STD is largely about.

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From controlling population growth, this can help suppress the increasing carbon emission in India. As a result, would help slow down the exacerbating global warming and the consequences that come with it. According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, population of India is 1.32 billion, hitting the 1-billion mark.

However, the theoretical argument hinges on comparing families at the same income level. The IHDS is unique in developing country surveys in collecting detailed income data from 56 sources of income including farming, livestock, business, wage labor, family and non-family transfers. We now turn to the evidence in support of each of these possibilities in the context of the one child family in India. Third, responses to fertility preferences and contraceptive use remain subject to measurement error, particularly since the interview setting often precludes privacy. However, a brief analysis of fertility preferences of women who have stopped at one child is instructive. About 73% of mothers with a single child said they did not want more children; 22% were sterilized.

“In places where the two-child policy is tied to panchayati raj elections, studies reveal that the people most affected are the very sections of the society and communities that the 73rd Amendment sought to bring into the decision-making process. Data also reveals that it has led to the abandonment of wives and a sharp fall in the immunisation rates among third children and an increase in sex-selective abortions,” said Dr Mohan Rao, formerly a professor at the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University. The incident from Madhya Pradesh refocuses attention on the two-child policy followed in several States, under which individuals with more than two children cannot serve as Sarpanch or panchayat member or are ineligible to hold government positions. The policy has been implemented in several States as a population control measure.

In its response, the Indian government told the apex court that it would not implement a mandatory two-child policy. “The Family Welfare Programme in India is voluntary in nature, which enables couples to decide the size of their family and adopt the family planning methods best suited to them according to their choice without any compulsion,” said the affidavit by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. “In fact, international experience shows that any coercion to have a certain number of children is counter-productive and leads to demographic distortions.” The feasibility of implementing a One-Child Policy in India is heavily scrutinized, citing fundamental differences between India’s democratic structure and China’s authoritarian regime. The paper discusses various socio-economic factors that may hinder the success of such a policy in India, including cultural attitudes towards childbirth, rising male preference leading to gender imbalance, and the challenges of an aging population. Ultimately, the author argues that development and the empowerment of women may be more effective means of population control than a restrictive child policy.

In fact, population is growing slowly or even declining in most G20 countries that have the highest per capita emissions. This is because the impact of a large population on emissions is determined by not just the number of people one child policy in india consuming goods, but also the intensity of that consumption. Currently, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), India is very low on consumption. As many as 17 Indians use as much as just one American citizen in terms of carbon and environmental resources. Since the policy was implemented in 1979, China has seen 400 million fewer births, which has resulted in 18 million fewer tonnes of CO2 emissions a year.

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In UP, we know what Adityanath and his henchmen are doing.” UP’s population bill received flak even from right-wing Hindu groups. The VHP (Vishva Hindu Parishad) has warned the state government that any population control measure should keep in mind the fact that Hindu dominance must remain intact in the country. What seems to have caused the furore in UP is the timing of the announcement, coming as it did with state elections just eight months away.

While some decline in proportions at higher parity may occur due to increases in the age at first birth, the median age at first birth in India remains quite low, at about 20 years as of years preceding NFHS-III survey in 2005–6. Hence, for women in their 30s, this compositional effect would vanish and the fact that the proportion of women aged 30–34 with just one living child has increased from 6% to 9% (with similar change observed for other ages) is indicative of a rising trend towards one child families that is deliberate. This increase is particularly large for couples with high levels of education. Among couples with secondary education or above for both partners, the proportion of 45–49 year old women with a single child rose from 3.5% to 6.7% between 1998–9 and 2005–6 (Pradhan and Sekhar 2014), precisely the group that is seen in the vanguard of fertility change.

• Increasing globalization has led to sharp increases in private sector salaries; the implementation of the Fifth and Sixth Pay Commission recommendations have also led to a tremendous growth in government worker salaries.
• In the 1960s and 1970s, neo‐​Malthusian panic about overpopulation overtook eugenics as the primary motivation behind coercive policies aimed at limiting childbearing.
• But the accelerated ageing of the population yields an increasing old dependency ratio.
• Secondly, will the ageing Western world continue to look toward India for STEM graduates?

The efforts under the Supplementary Nutrition Programme under Anganwadi Services and POSHAN Abhiyaan have been rejuvenated and converged as ‘SakshamAnganwadi and POSHAN 2.0’ (Mission Poshan 2.0). It seeks to address the challenges of malnutrition in children, adolescent girls, pregnant women and lactating mothers through a strategic shift in nutrition content and delivery and by creation of a convergent eco-system to develop and promote practices that nurture health, wellness and immunity. This observation has important implications for fertility theories that have assumed a floor of two child families for the first demographic transition. The life style of the one-child families that we document is an extension of the life style of two child families. Both are more likely to invest in children’s education than larger families but parents of a single child are even more invested in this child than families with two children.

• She further said that States must align with the national approach, which is enabling and not enforcing, so that population stabilisation is achieved through informed choice and equitable development.
• Since one-child families are concentrated at the upper end of the income distribution, it is not surprising that one-child families have more assets (9.7 of a total of 23) than larger families (7.8 assets).
• A Fine BalanceNo one discussing the subject can ignore the China evidence.
• Since the late 1970s, China’s administration has been enforcing a one child policy to control the existing population growth rate (Greenhalgh 311).
• You should wonder when Canada decided to open new High Commissions, which two places did they target first?

In Uttarakhand, the Chief Minister was persuaded to launch a population initiative after lobbying from RSS affiliates calling on the state government to ensure “demographic balance” (in other words, perceived rising numbers of certain segments of the population). Leaders and spokespersons in Karnataka have also voiced on curbing population basis certain criteria. India’s current contraceptive uptake is heavily reliant on female sterilisations. The perception that family planning and contraception are a women’s burden to bear is pervasive across both rural and urban areas. National Family Health Survey 5 (NFHS-5)—a recent nationwide survey from 2019 to 2021—found that only one in ten men use condoms and male sterilisations account for only 0.3% of all family planning methods. The onus of contraception has almost entirely fallen on women and female sterilisation has become the most opted method of contraception over the last few decades.

But our elderly population will keep increasing, because we are living longer. Who is going to drive growth if the working-age population starts shrinking relative to the elderly too quickly? Prime Minister’s Economic Advisor and noted economist Shamika Ravi talks about India’s falling fertility rate Sandhwan had made similar remarks on November 8, arguing that in a state grappling with drug addiction, parents with only one child face severe emotional and practical consequences if that child falls into substance abuse.

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Andhra Pradesh has scrapped the AP Panchayat Raj Act and the AP Municipal Acts which barred people with more than two children from contesting local body polls. Poshan 2.0 focuses on Maternal Nutrition, Infant and Young Child Feeding Norms, Treatment of Moderately Acute Malnourished/Severely Acute Malnourished children and Wellness through AYUSH. It rests on the pillars of Convergence, Governance, and Capacity-building.