Demography India Vol. 28, Issue. 2 (1999)

From the Chief Editor’s Desk

National Population Policy in the Muddle

The National Population Policy seems to be getting into a deeper and deeper muddle, as seen from the press reports, especially on the issue of incentives and disincentives. This is a sad state of affairs in the polity of the country. The Draft National Population Policy document prepared by a committee of scholars and program administrators headed by no less a distinguished person as Dr. M. S. Swaminathan was submitted to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in May 1994. The highest interstate authority in the country, the National Development Council, constituted this Committee in 1993. It took its job seriously, held discussions with all the stakeholders of the policy and submitted its report to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare almost within a year of its formation. It was a well thought out document laying out the policy frame-work, directions and goals of action and the necessary implementation structures at the central. state and the district levels. It is still not clear why the recommendations contained in the report were not accepted for implementation. Probably two of the major recommendations contained in this Report, viz. (1) the merger of the Department of Health and Family Welfare with the Department of Health into a single department at the Center and (2) the establishment of a Population and Social Development Commission as an overarching authority on population issues, seem to have stirred the hornets' nest within the established bureaucracy.

The Department of Health and Family Welfare prepared their own draft of a population policy, ostensibly taking into account the salient features of the Swaminathan Committee report in 1998 and arranged a hurried discussion of the same with selected experts and submitted it to the Government. The government then appointed a Committee of Ministers under the Chairmanship of Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission which had a series of discussions with experts (which included me) and I thought the policy will be approved by the Cabinet and placed before parliament for discussions and adoption as national policy.

From the newspaper reports, it appears that the policy is getting into unnecessary controversies on the issue of incentives and disincentives, such as on the imposition of small family norm on the elected members of state legislature and parliament. There is no need to get into such draconian measures for reducing fertility and achieving population stabilization in the country. The states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Goa and Andhra Pradesh have achieved replacement levels of fertility without resort to these strong measures. The desired family size is rapidly declining in the country even in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan as observed from the recent surveys conducted in the country. The unmet need for family planning among married couples is increasing and the need of the hour is to organize good quality, easily accessible and economically affordable contraceptive services to couples with choice of methods and quality of care. Programs for empowerment of women should support these with focus on the education of the girl child and income generating activities for women.

Taking into account the enormous demographic and developmental diversities currently prevalent among the different states in the country, the varying efficiencies of the state bureaucracies, especially in their implementation educational and health programs, some of us were arguing for the last few years that time has come to shift the focus of population policies from the national to the state levels. I am happy to note that within the past one year the states of Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and recently Madhya Pradesh have formulated and announced their population policies and Uttar Pradesh is in the process of developing one. The process adopted in these states included the following steps; recognition at the highest level, by the state chief minister, to have a population policy for the state; constitution of a committee of experts and officials to prepare a draft of the policy; discussion of the draft with all the stakeholders within and outside the government including the various departments of the government which have to implement different aspects of the policy, non governmental organizations and political leaders; finalization of the draft and submission to the government; discussions at the political level with all the parties; formal approval by the cabinet and announcement by the chief minister as the official population policy for the state. The process of policy formulation, especially for the state of Madhya Pradesh with which I was associated was as much democratic as it was scientific. In this context when state after state is in the process of preparing their own state level population policies, the thrust and relevance of the national population policy should be revisited. The center should henceforth play the role of friend, philosopher and guide to state governments in the formulation and implementation of state policies rather than trying to impose a national policy from above. The center should ensure and monitor that good quality reproductive health and family planning services are provided by the state since if the center is going to pay for these services they have a right to demand that the state provides good quality services. National Population Policy should be more oriented towards ensuring that the state level policies are in the right direction commensurate with the national aspirations and international commitments, supporting them financially and monitoring the quality of services provided by the state run service centers. Any type of central regulations on incentives and disincentives do not appear to be called for at this stage of demographic transition and democratic decentralization.

K. Srinivasan
Chief Editor, Demography India