[sacw] India's billion by Saheli's Laxmi Murthy (FL)

[Harsh Kapoor]

12 Sept. 1999
FYI
Harsh Kapoor
(South Asia Citizens Web)
---------------------------

http://www.the-hindu.com/fline/fl1619/16190890.htm

FRONTLINE, Volume 16 - Issue 19, Sep. 11 - 24, 1999

DEMOGRAPHY

India's billion
With the birth of the billionth Indian, as estimated by the U.N's Population
Division, one in every six people in the world is an Indian.

LAXMI MURTHY

THE billionth Indian has been born. According to estimates released by the
Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the
United Nations, this event took place on August 15. The announcement was
received with considerable sur prise, since Indian estimates had placed the
event as far away as May 2000. Officials at the Union Ministry of Health and
Family Welfare insist that India is still short of the billion mark by about
12 million. The exact date is yet to be fixed by the technical committee on
Population Projection.

The announcement by the U.N. Population Division took even other U.N.
agencies by surprise. The U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), which has been
gearing for its Day of Six Billion, was somewhat deflated when the "Day of
the Billionth Indian" stole some of th e momentum of the build-up to the
campaign.

According to UNFPA estimates, the world population will reach the
six-billion mark on October 12 - only 12 years after the five-billion mark.
>From 1804, when the world passed the one-billion mark, it took 123 years to
reach the two-billion mark in 1927; 33 years to reach three-billion mark in
1960; 14 years to reach the four-billion mark in 1974. The landmark of five
billion was crossed 13 years later, on July 11, 1987, a day which the
governing council of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
suggested retrospectively in 1989 should be observed annually as World
Population Day. The intent behind this observance was to "focus attention on
the urgency and importance of population issues, their impact on development
and the environment, and on the need to find solutions to these concerns."
The theme for the 1999 World Population Day, "Count up to the Day of Six
Billion", was intended to drive home the message that although world
population growth has slowed, population is still growing - addin g 78
million people every year.

Of the total increase in world population, 60 per cent is contributed by
just 10 countries. India tops the list - contributing 21 per cent, with
China second at 15 per cent. With India reaching the one-billion mark, one
in every six people in the world i s an Indian. Yet it is clear that the
population growth rate the world over is slowing. The growth rate of 1.33
per cent a year between 1995 and 2000 is significantly less than the peak
growth rate of 2.04 per cent between 1965 and 1970. In the developin g
countries, family size has reduced by half in the last three decades.

On October 28, 1998, the UNFPA moved the Day of Six Billion from June 16 to
October 12, 1999. Dr. Nafis Sadiq, Executive Director, UNFPA, said: "This is

very encouraging news." Yet a closer look reveals that there are distressing
reasons underlying the a pparent population slowdown. The UNFPA itself
admits that this is, according to the revised estimates, partly a result of
the HIV/AIDS (Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency
Syndrome) pandemic. For instance, in Botswana, one of the coun tries hardest
hit, one adult in four is infected with HIV.

IN any case, how relevant is the precise date of crossing either the billion
mark or the six-billion mark? In a vast country like India, exact
projections are near impossible and estimates may be way off the mark. While
fixing exact dates on these events may be of mere statistical interest, they
do serve to whip up a collective frenzy about the population "explosion". It
is brought home to us that every sixth person in the world will be an
Indian. Cause for celebration? Or alarm? The latter, if the inte rnational
media are anything to go by.

A case in point would be a "news brief" of the Worldwatch Institute by
Lester Brown and Brian Halweil, authors of Beyond Malthus: Nineteen
Dimensions of the Population Challenge, a neo-Malthusian analysis centred on
"over"-population as the major causative factor of food scarcity and
environmental degradation. The authors outline a gloomy picture for India:
"Well before hitting the one billion mark, the demands of India's population
were outrunning its natural resource base. This can be seen in i ts
shrinking forests, deteriorating rangelands, and falling water tables." They
quote the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) which estimates
that aquifer depletion could reduce India's grain harvest by one-fourth. The
gloomy prognosis contin ues with a dire warning of political anarchy:
"Falling water tables will likely lead to rising grain prices on a scale
that could destabilise not only grain markets, but possibly the government
itself." And in conclusion, the authors intone: "The princip al threat now
may not be military aggression from without but population growth from
within."

The presentation of population growth as a security threat stems from a
supposed causal relationship between population pressures and resource
scarcities. The main proponent of the scarcity-conflict model, Canadian
political scientist Thomas Homer-Dixon, suggests that environmentally
induced internal conflict in turn causes states to fragment or become more
authoritarian, seriously disrupting international security. The
scarcity-conflict model today largely informs foreign policy, besides
population and environmental policies. This perspective ignores the other,
more important, contributory factors of environmental degradation - colonial
forest policies which laid the ground for the ravaging of forests by
contractors and the government, inequitable con sumption patterns, and
polluting technology. Moreover, it ignores the organic relationship with
nature shared by many indigenous and rural communities. Human beings are not
merely rapacious consumers of the earth's resources, in some social
paradigms they also protect and nurture the earth. The unsustainable

depletion of natural resources is more characteristic of an urban,
industrial society. Rural Indian women have spearheaded ecological
movements, questioned the dominant development paradigm, and campaigned for
a more sustainable model.

P.V. SIVAKUMAR
Of the total increase in world population,
60 per cent is contributed by just 10 countries.
India tops the list, contributing 21 per cent.

In India, the consumption by the highest income group (1.44 per cent of the
population), of electricity, petroleum products and machine-based household
appliances - products that have global environmental impact - is about 75
per cent of the total. For i nstance, the land diverted from food crop
production to floriculture not only adversely impacts on nutritional levels,
but degrades the environment with high pesticide and fertilizer use.

The consumption pattern of the elite in any Third World country is
comparable to the relationship between that country and the "developed"
world. In Latin America, for instance, vast tracts of valuable rainforest
were cleared for cattle ranching. Owing t o favourable tariff treatment,
most of the beef in Latin America is exported to the United States, much of
it for use in fast-food chains or for pet food. The average Central American
eats less beef than the average house-cat in the U.S. Every North American
child consumes as much energy as three Japanese, six Mexicans, 12 Chinese,
33 Indians, 147 Bangladeshis, 281 Tanzanians or 422 Ethiopians.

I = PAT, an algebraic equation put forth in the 1970s by Paul Ehrlich and
John Holdren, measures the impact of humans on the environment (I) as the
product of the number of people (P), affluence/the amount of goods consumed
per person (A), and the pollut ion generated by technology per good consumed
(T). This analysis fails to account for various complexities such as who
among the monolithic P is responsible for what, and the how and why behind
pollution. While the global population reaches the six-billi on mark, it is
worthwhile to remember that just under 25 per cent of the world's population
consumes about 75 per cent of the world's resources and energy, and the same
fraction generates most of the world's waste and global atmospheric
pollution. The Pe ntagon, for instance, is the largest single consumer of
energy in the U.S. and generates a tonne of toxic waste every minute. It is
the "luxury" emissions of the rich that generate almost 90 per cent of the
ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and two-thirds of carbon dioxide
emissions, rather than the "survival" emissions of the poor. However, the
"consumption explosion", with its disastrous implications, appears to
engender less fear in the public consciousness than the "population
explosion".

Yet the belief that all people use resources and create waste, and large
families use more resources and create more waste, gained currency among
most international development agencies which put population high on their
agendas for problem-solving. The 'T' component of the debate - the
highest-polluting industrial processes that provide consumer goods for the

wealthiest fifth of humanity - are controlled almost entirely by men in the
most powerful transnational corporations and governments, which manuf acture
chemicals and weapons of mass destruction, with the main goal of maximising
economic growth and profit. Yet policies of "population control" are
targeted at the "poorest of the poor" - institutionally powerless women
whose main goal is survival an d have larger numbers of children for complex
reasons that range from immediate survival and necessity to high infant
mortality, lack of access to health services and patriarchal control over
reproduction.

India has one of the longest-running population programmes in the world, and
Indian women, especially those from the poorer sections, have been subject
to a population reduction programme garbed in euphemisms ranging from
"family planning" to "family wel fare" and now "reproductive health".
Sterilisation accounts for 71 per cent of contraception practice in India
and the procedure is usually performed after achieving a family size of
three or four children. Although it is an effective option of birth con trol
for the individual woman, it does not have a significant demographic impact.
To reduce birth rates dramatically, spacing methods have to gain primacy.
>From a policy-maker's perspective, long-acting hormonal contraceptives such
as injectables (Net En and Depo Provera) and implants such as Norplant are
"ideal" because they are provider-controlled. Women need not be relied upon
to remember taking the pill, or to keep intrauterine devices in place, and
men need not be persuaded to use condoms. The shif t to long-acting,
hazardous contraceptives is justified on the plea that birth rates have to
be brought down in a hurry - the price that women pay with their health is
irrelevant.

The much-touted "paradigm shift" in population policy following the
International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo in
1994 pressured governments to depart from "demographic imperative" language
and accommodate women's perspectives . Yet real changes have yet to take
place. The panic about population explosions tends to overtake concerns of
empowering women and enlarging the coverage of primary health care. The
Delhi Population Bill, which was recently introduced in the Delhi Assembly,
contains harsh disincentives for those who have more than two children.

For many decades it has been known that birth rates are affected by a
variety of parameters - the means of production, that is, whether the
economy is in subsistence or industrialised mode; women's status and
education; family structures; women's partici pation in the labour force,
and so on. Though Indian representatives at the first World Congress on
Population in Bucharest in 1975 popularised the slogan "Development is the
best contraceptive", official policy has concentrated almost exclusively on
the provision of contraceptives. The technological "solution" of developing
more effective contraceptives is a politically safer option than genuine
changes which impact on birth rates - land reform, expansion of social
services and a just distribution of r esources. It is this paradigm which
has to shift for birth rates to fall and equitable development to take place.

Laxmi Murthy is an activist and researcher in population and gender issues.
She is associated with the non-governmental organisation, Saheli.