Thread by @nehadixit123

#Thread
This week, UP CM Yogi Adityanath unveiled a new population policy that aims to bring population growth to 2.1%. Such moves in the past have always penalised the marginalised and will do the same this time. (1/n)

According to a report by Centre for Health & Social Justice, “In 2002, in Lakhimpur Kheri, 5 Dalit farm labourers, aged 18 to 32 years, were taken to a hospital by their upper caste landlord on the pretext of being inoculated against malaria, given injections & knocked out." 2/n

"...They found out later that they were sterilised. Two of the five were not even married. The UP government in its zest to promote family planning offered gun licences to anyone who brought five cases. The farmer got the licence.” 3/n

The same happened in the Emergency when in several parts of Uttar Pradesh, gun licences were issued to men who underwent vasectomies. 3/n

A 2011 study by the Surat-based Centre for Social Studies says the two-child norm is being used to settle personal scores & has no structured implementation mechanism. Action is only taken if someone complains about the third child. 4/n

Reports suggest that 2 child policy, in Odisha since 1994, affected women in reproductive age more when age for contesting elections was lowered to 21 from 26. Its pressures women to undergo sterilisation, also leads to increased sex-selective abortions to ensure male heirs.
5/n

A Mahila Chetna Manch study in 2002 revealed that 82 per cent of 113 disqualified persons in Panchayati Raj due to the two-child norm were from the SC/ST and OBC communities. 6/n

People who adopt the two-child norm get preference in land allotment, allotment of surplus agricultural land, assignment of house sites and houses and sanitation schemes. 7/n

Other public benefits denied to families with more than three children in the five states include maternity and public distribution benefits. Thus, the law is further penalising marginalised communities in the name of population control. 8/n

With a family planning programme driven by female sterilisation, it is not surprising that more than half the women who get sterilised have the operation before 26. 9/n

Only 27 % of married women decide about their health care by themselves, acc to NFHS-3 data. Studies show that most men approve of contraception only after having a 2nd or 3rd child & that their approval of methos is critical. 10/n

The idea that poor people with more children consume more of the nation’s wealth has also been challenged, both nationally and globally. The increasing divide between rich and poor in India has to be addressed while rethinking population policies. 11/n

Dr Abhijit Das says, “A simple check on how much water, electricity and food is used by a middle-class family with two children and a set of parents in comparison to a poor family with five children in an urban slum will give you the answer.” 12/n

Muslim women, for whom contraception is a religious taboo, are not considered while forming population policies, leading to questions around equity in access to contraceptives for minority communities. 13/n

Matthew Connelly, who has extensively worked on population policies across the world, writes in Salon that the idea of ticking population bombs in developing countries needs to be thought through in much greater detail. In the present form, it is only penalising the poor. 14/n

For more read:
fountainink.in/reportage/a-mo…