GS PAPER II EDITORIAL
Getting population policy all wrong
Population Policy in India
- Uttar Pradesh and Assam want to pursue population policies to actively discourage families having more than two children, deploying penalties such as exclusion from welfare schemes and from eligibility for government jobs for contesting local polls.
- This is wrong-headed, as testified to by the experience of China, which, after enforcing a one-child norm, stares at a steep fall in working-age people and has been trying, without success, to get people to have more children.
- The State should focus not on family size but on social development and economic progress, which work to stabilise the population.
- India is progressing on the population front. The total fertility rate (TFR) is the average number of children a woman will have in her lifetime, fell below 2.1%, the replacement level, in a majority of states, showed the National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS; 2019-20) that covered 22 states in Phase 1.
- UP’s TFR declined to 2.7% in 2015-16 from 3.8% in 2005-06, according to NFHS-4 data. Policy must focus on improving social well-being, and educating and equipping the young for productive jobs.
- Many who babble on about population explosion are oblivious of the danger of a society depressing its birth rate before it grows prosperous enough to save and provide, from the earnings of a shrinking population of those who work, for a growing dependent population.
Conclusion
- China, with a per-capita income of some $10,000, is now desperate to raise its birth rate.
- India, with a per-capita income one-fifth China’s, should draw the right lessons. Invest in people and you get both prosperity and smaller families.
GS PAPER II
Geopolitical indicators India cannot ignore
Geo-political activity in the world
- The long speech of President of China at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on the occasion of the CPC’s centenary celebration on July 1 and the address of US President to the joint session of the Congress earlier on April 29 provide significant inputs on the contemporary global scene that was marked by a developing bipolarity between US-led West and the residual of the world of Communism of the Cold War era now led by China.
- In that equation the present profile of Pakistan is important for India in determining the latter’s strategic framework. The two Presidents were expansive about defining their domestic and international policies that makes it easy to identify the thrust areas of their future approach and have an idea of how in their own ways the two countries were visualizing their role as a superpower.
- Pakistan’s current strategy is to be on the right side of the USA regime without allowing any let up on its closeness towards its ‘all weather friend’, China.
- India has all pieces in place to firmly decide not only upon its strategy for South Asia but its long-term approach towards the developing global scenario, as well.
- At Tiananmen Square, Chinese President attired in Mao suit declared that the Chinese nation, comprising ‘Chinese people of all ethnic groups’, had achieved the first centenary goal of building a ‘moderately prosperous’ society resolving the ‘historical problem of absolute poverty’ and was now moving to the second goal of making China a great ‘modern Socialist country’.
- Recalling how salvos of Russian October Revolution brought Marxism-Leninism to China and how CPC was born in 1921 to seek ‘happiness for the Chinese people and rejuvenation of Chinese nation’, Xi contended that establishment of People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 was a victory of the ‘new democratic revolution’ over ‘imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism’.
- The Chinese President talked of ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’ that believed in rule-based governance and a sound system of intra-party regulations.
- In tracing the history of CPC, he put only Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaping on the top and evidently identified himself primarily with these two ideologues. This found reflection in Xi’s proposition that ‘China transformed itself from a highly centralised planned economy to a Socialist market economy taking the country from isolation to one that is open to the outside world across the board’.
- China leapt to world’s second largest economy raising the living standards of people from ‘bare subsistence to an overall level of moderate prosperity’.
- This confirms the view that China continues to pursue the economic route to becoming a superpower while maintaining a strong military position.
- The Chinese President presented Belt and Road Initiative as China’s new achievement in providing ‘development opportunities to the world’. He emphasised on the acceleration of modernisation of national defence and the armed forces and asserted that ‘a strong country must have a strong military’.
- On Hong Kong, Xi accepted ‘one country two systems’ but on Taiwan he reiterated the call of ‘one China’ secured through ‘peaceful reunification’.
- The USA President address to the Congress on the completion of hundred days of his administration also devoted more to the US domestic scene and while defining the American stand on various aspects of international relations, laid emphasis on US responding to threats ‘jointly with its allies’.
- The speech avoided any aggressive overtones. The USA talked of rebuilding the nation after the worst economic crisis caused by the pandemic and spoke at length on American Rescue Plan, Family Plan and the Jobs Plan, the last one in particular was described as a ‘blue collar blueprint to build America’. He laid emphasis on ‘revitalising our democracy’ and declared upfront that ‘white supremacy is terrorism’. He called for unity ‘to heal the soul of the nation’ and strongly recommended gun control.
- On the world scene, the USA christened President of China as an autocrat who was ‘earnest about becoming the most significant and consequential nation in the world’ and warned China that while US welcomed competition it will do all to defend America’s interests across the board.
- In respect of Russia, the USA President stated that ‘we do not want escalation but there will be consequences for its actions’. Highlighting the importance of US alliance with NATO, USA declared that ‘we are back to stay’ to protect human rights and fundamental freedoms.
- Making a passing reference to ‘the forever war in Afghanistan’ USA claimed that having degraded Al Qaeda, the US will now ‘maintain over the horizon capacity to suppress threats to homeland’.
- Both the USA President and Chinese President used the term ‘rebuilding our nation’ and ‘rejuvenation of Chinese nation’ as their respective theme points giving the impression of a preoccupation with their domestic scenario.
- However, their speeches also suggested a slow but definite ideological polarization between them as world powers, based on the rival systems of a pluralistic democratic order on one hand and a one-party dictatorship, on the other.
- China did not mention India and USA was silent on Sino-Pak military alliance. The Chinese President glorified the role of PLA that is now strengthened in Ladakh sector under an independent General.
- President Biden talked of ‘terrorism having metastasized’, saying that Al Qaeda and ISIS were still there, but he made no reference to Pakistan whose patronisation of Islamic extremists was globally acknowledged.
- It can be presumed that the Biden Administration attached an overriding importance to Pakistan as a helpful factor in dealing with Afghanistan. This should cause India some degree of concern.
- Pakistan desired a stable, peaceful and sovereign democratic Afghanistan for regional connectivity and economic progress, Quraishi significantly remarked that it was for the people of Afghanistan to decide what will be the ruling dispensation there.
- Pakistan will deal with the government so established at Kabul.
- The role of Pakistan in facilitating the peace process at Doha between US and Taliban and participating in Afghan reconstruction and regretted that the Afghan leadership was not able to sit with all others and work out a peaceful resolution.