Poonam Muttreja, Executive Director, Population Foundation of India, noted that two-child norms are known to “disproportionately impact the most deprived and vulnerable, particularly women and girls, who already have little to no access to health and education”. The actions proposed by the Uttar Pradesh draft bill, for example, would worsen gender inequalities. Muttreja noted that many of the incentives proposed in the bill (maternity leave, additional social security benefits etc.) would hold no significance for 80% of the female workforce who are employed in the informal sector. The number of people living below poverty line is 22% of the population in India (United Nations).

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As in China, in some states in India, women’s education and their aspirations for their children have contributed to lower birth rates. By the late 1980s, economic costs and incentives created by the contract system were already reducing the number of children farmers wanted. A study by Cameron and colleagues explored this phenomenon, finding that the one-child policy had behavioral impacts on only children. The authors tested Beijing youths born in several birth cohorts just before and just after the launch of the one-child policy using economic games designed to detect differences in desirable social behaviors like trust and altruism. Many Indian local governments, perhaps inspired by China’s one-child policy, have created laws that apply penalties for having more than two children. While they are less severe than China’s one-child policy, the two-child laws in India are still considered problematic and discriminatory.

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These coercive policies not only abuse individuals’ rights but fail to achieve their intended goals. Studies have shown that the correlation between fertility rates and coercive measures is not substantiated. A 2005 study on the two-child norm in panchayats (village-level governance) in five states recorded unintended consequences of such clauses—desertion of wives, sex-selection and termination of female foetuses, and the resignation of posts followed by repeated pregnancies in the hope of a son! In a society where son preference is so prevalent, the two-child policy is widening the sex ratio at birth. In China, the government found that once fertility rates dropped, they were faced with an aging population.

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The irony is that India’s birth rate and the size of families are decreasing because of women’s own reproductive choices. As happened at the height of China’s one-child policy, Indians could lose government jobs and more if such laws were passed at the national level. But despite a lower fertility rate, the country’s population is still growing. Factual evidence has shown that a child limit greatly reduces the fertility rate, the unemployment rate, and is healthy for the planet.

Establishment and implementation of China’s one-child policy

Long-term consequences of the policy included a substantially greater number of males than females in China and a shrinking workforce. Despite declining birth rates, some politicians have advocated for the adoption of something like China’s former one-child policy in northern states with large Muslim populations. These calls have less to do with demographic reality, and more to do with majoritarian Hindu nationalist concerns around Muslim and “lower-caste” fertility. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, infant mortality dropped significantly.

• In pockets of rural India, it was the same hunger for sons combined with poverty and inability to sustain large families which spelt doom for the baby girls.
• Overtly coercive official policies were ended by the 1980s, with the two-child family norm advanced through the ‘Hum Do Humaare Do’ mass campaign.
• But despite a lower fertility rate, the country’s population is still growing.
• It was implemented nationwide by the Chinese government in 1980, and it ended in 2016.
• These family planning laws are aimed toward politicians, both current and aspiring.
• The study also found that restrictive policies were selectively applied, made little difference in contraceptive uptake, and had adverse consequences.

Because of this new belief, the population would be likely to keep declining, which could have tragic repercussions for China in the coming decades. In both countries, skewed sex ratios caused by sex selective abortions have led to a range of social problems, including forced marriages and human trafficking. China will for the first time allow couples to have a third child in a further relaxation of family planning rules five years after a “two-child policy” largely failed to boost birth rates. There are laws in some states that apply penalties to ordinary citizens for having more than two children. These disincentives include denying government rights to children born after the second child. They may also deny state-provided healthcare for mothers and children, including nutritional supplements for pregnant women.

In both India and China, these population policies had unintended consequences. An NGO called the Jansankya Samadhan Foundation (JSF) has been calling for a two-child policy across India for years. The Minister also ruled out that there is a higher growth in Muslim population in the country as is being projected by a section of BJP and RSS and also denied any large scale conversions. One of my own most unforgettable experiences was talking to Kanchamma, a sixty-year-old midwife in Usilampatti who had brought hundreds of babies to life and sent several more of them back to their maker. Twenty-five years ago, in the privacy of a dark room inside her hut she whispered to me her horrible secrets with graphic gestures sometimes even enacting the gruesome scenes that had taken place. It was eerie how she could talk so calmly and with flailing hands imitating the death throes of the infant girl struggling under a sari in which she was covered.

The one-child policy was managed by the National Population and Family Planning Commission under the central government since 1981. The Ministry of Health of the People’s Republic of China and the National Population and Family Planning Commission were made defunct and a new single agency, the National Health and Family Planning Commission, took over national health and family planning policies in 2013. It was also around 1970 that the concept of sex-selective abortion was introduced in India. Clinics encouraged parents to “get rid of unwanted daughters” and focus on having only sons.

This has led to an “inverted pyramid,” in which two sets of elderly parents must rely on a single married couple of two adult children (each of whom is an only child with no siblings), who in turn have produced a single child on whom the family must eventually rely on in the next generation. Despite declining birth rates, some politicians have advocated for the adoption of something like China’s former one-child policy in northern states with large Muslim populations. 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 1994, India was a signatory to the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo, which concurred that population stabilisation could be achieved by addressing the education and literacy levels. Finally, in April 1996, the targets-based approach was abandoned and substituted by a decentralised approach with a focus on community needs and health rather than demography.

The policy was enacted to address the growth rate of the country’s population, which the government viewed as being too rapid. It was enforced by a variety of methods, including financial incentives for families in compliance, contraceptives, forced sterilizations, and forced abortions. On 31 May 2021, China’s government relaxed restrictions even more, allowing women up to three children.[136][137][138][139] This change was brought about mainly due to the declining birth rate and population growth.

There have been several BJP leaders that have spoken that have elaborated on a perceived threat of a rising Muslim population. In 2021, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat advocated for several measures to tackle this threat including the implementation of a population policy for a “religion-based population balance”. The disincentives proposed by the Uttar Pradesh bill – and already implemented in whole or part in other states – have a direct impact on an individual’s livelihood and prospects.

These problems could come to India with the implementation of a two-child policy. The memories which came flooding back to me were oppressive and distressing. I remembered the first time I interviewed mothers who had killed their infant daughters in similar gruesome ways because their families didn’t want https://www.1investing.in/ girls. Some cried as they recounted how the infant struggled in its death throes after being fed poison. One woman wept inconsolably because she was nine months pregnant and knew if she had a daughter the infant would be killed. The refrain which ran through all their stories was “I had no choice”.

They restrict an individual’s choice and exploit their economic vulnerability and career aspirations in the name of ‘population stabilisation’. The question of a one-child policy in India is not merely a demographic one; it is a deeply social, ethical, and cultural debate. By understanding the data and engaging in open and informed dialogue, India can chart a path towards sustainable population management that respects individual rights and builds a brighter future for all its citizens. At the non-profit, Population Foundation of India (PFI), executive director, Poonam Muttreja, finds strong links between a woman’s education levels and employment status and preferred family size. “Women with less education and less wealth tend to choose to have more than two children.

As a result, would help slow down the exacerbating global warming and the consequences that come with it. The one-child policy prompted the growth of orphanages in the 1980s.[183] For parents who had “unauthorized” births, or who wanted a son but had a daughter, giving up their child for one child policy india adoption was a strategy to avoid penalties under one-child restrictions. The program was intended to be applied universally, although exceptions were made—e.g., parents within some ethnic minority groups or those whose firstborn was handicapped were allowed to have more than one child.

With 10,000+ measures from 193 countries, the database offers key insights into efforts around the world. Globally, almost one in three women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence at least once in their life. This violence is often perpetrated by current or former intimate partners.