Prabhat Ranjan Deen
If the growing population of the country is not becoming a cause of concern for the people of the country, then it is a matter of even more serious concern. If the citizens of the country are not serious about their land, their limited resources and their limitations and do not try to balance them, then it shows the level of awareness of the citizens and the reality of their love for the country.
When the citizens of the country become devoid of their civic responsibility, then the government has the duty to intervene. This is unequivocal practice. China’s growing population was controlled when the Chinese government had to intervene and brought strict laws to handle the population anarchy. If the Chinese government did not do this, the animal-like instinct of increasing the population would not have stopped there. The Chinese government had to take a decision to balance the population by making strict laws. The Government of India should have taken this decision long back, but the politics of votes has chewed up the interest of the country. Ironically, through the 42nd Constitutional Amendment-1976, the central government as well as the state governments were authorized to make laws on population control, despite this, governments obsessed with vote politics did not pay heed to it. Till date, there is no single national policy in the country which limits the number of children for a couple. Even the country’s highest court has also not yet realized the need for such a policy. While many petitions are filed in the Supreme Court, which are demanding the Supreme Court to order the Government to implement the two-child policy in the country.
The politicians of India use words like population-bomb and population-explosion very frequently in their oration and give a lot of arguments. But whenever the issue of controlling the rapidly growing population comes, they make it rotten by entangling religion and politics in the issue. The initiative taken by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to discipline the uncontrollable population of UP, the country’s largest state, is going to be included in the list of underlined contributions for the country’s interest. The whole nation will accept this initiative… will understand its imperative. By bringing the proposal of the Population Control Act, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has given a message to the politicians also to keep the larger interest of the country on priority. UP is like a nation with a population of more than 23 crores. On the basis of population, the place of Uttar Pradesh comes after five countries of the world. That is, if UP was a country, then UP would have been ranked sixth among countries with a large population.
The total estimated population of Uttar Pradesh in the year 2021 is 23 crore 15 lakh 02 thousand 578. The total area of Uttar Pradesh is 2,40,928 square kilometer. Within this area, people have to live, cultivate, do development works, study in schools and colleges, get treatment in hospitals, walk on the roads, protect the forest and on this land-area only the rivers and streams have to flow. The same natural law applies to the whole country and the world. The countries of the world are oriented to understand it and to remedy it, but the thick skin of the people of India does not feel it. The mist of stereotypes and rhetoric has covered the mind of the people so much that to save the country from this, the government will have to use the stick of strict laws, apart from this there is no option left. Yogi government has taken this initiative, and now many states including Karnataka have started seriously considering it to do the same. The way the population of the state is increasing, the government is facing problems in providing education, health and employment. So, controlling the population has become very important, which will help in providing facilities to the people and better utilization of resources.
UP Population (Control, Stabilization and Welfare) Bill-2021
The draft of the Uttar Pradesh Population (Control, Stabilization and Welfare) Bill-2021, released by the Uttar Pradesh State Law Commission, advocates the two-child policy. The couple who will have two children will be able to get many government concessions. Couples with more than two children may be deprived of many government benefits. The proposed population control bill has been kept flexible enough to give adoption rights to child-bearing couples as well. The proposed law allows any couple to adopt a child for adoption. Even if a couple has two children, they can adopt a third child. The proposed law will also treat a family with multiple wives or multiple husbands as a single unit and that unit will not be legally allowed to have more than two children.
Recommendations made in the proposed law
1. In the draft of the proposed law, it has been said that the ration card of a person with more than two children will be limited to four members and he will not be eligible to receive any government subsidy.
2. Within a year of the implementation of the Population Control Act, all government employees and elected representatives in the local body elections will have to give an undertaking that they will not violate the law.
3. If he gives birth to a third child after giving an affidavit, the law has recommended stopping promotion and even dismissal of government employees. There is no bar on the adoption of a third child.
4. The government will give special facilities to those who follow the policy of two children and undergo voluntary sterilization.
5. Government employees who follow the rule will get many facilities like two additional salary increments, promotion, 12 months maternity or paternity leave, insurance coverage for spouses, exemption in government housing schemes, increase in employer-contribution in PF.
6. Many facilities like water, electricity, house tax, home loan are proposed to be given to those who are not in government jobs.
7. A person with more than two children will not get the benefit of government schemes. That person will not be able to apply for government jobs or contest elections to any local body.
Possibility of amending the draft
Possibility of amendment in the proposed population control act, is also coming to the fore. There is no provision in the proposed draft for single parents or those having children without marriage (live-in relationship). It may also indicate that the law does not allow live-in relationships. The proposed law may give legal recognition to the remarriage of a widow or widower and the children born out of it. The government is also likely to consider the issue of recognizing the children born to widows or widowers in the past.
Difficulties in the way of law
Difficulties are also coming in the way of implementation of the proposed law. The question is arising that after the implementation of the law, what will happen to those MPs and MLAs who have more than two children? Will MPs and MLAs with more than two children not obstruct the implementation of this law? It will be a test of the efficiency of CM Yogi and how he gets the law passed by the assembly. In UP, 152 out of 304 BJP MLAs have more than two children. Many of these MLAs have up to six children. There are only 103 such MLAs in the state who have two children and only 34 MLAs have one child. BJP MP Ravi Kishan, who introduced the Private Member Bill in Parliament on population control, has four children.
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