Time has an interesting piece on Conspiracy Theory and Birth Control . This says that a recent research (500 African-Americans between the ages of 15 and 44) found that one third believe medical researchers use blacks as guinea pigs for unproven forms of contraception. About 25% believe that “poor and minority women are sometimes forced to be sterilized by the government,†and 22% believe that government policies are designed “to control the number of black people.â€.
This made me think about likely conspiracy theories in the Indian scenario. After fifty five years of policy and population control measures, the billion mark that we kept seeing for years and years has come and gone on. And we are still struggling with an ineffective population control program.
The cultural and economic factors are the more obvious and well understood. Couples having children and more children in the hope for a son. And then just one more son. Not to forget also the notion that a child is a gift from god. Urban, rural. Rich, poor. No difference here. And then, definitely among the poorer sections – one more child, one more earning hand – what about one more mouth to feed?
Beyond this, the tragic gender issues. A large majority of women, ignorant and powerless.
I remember these quotes from a long ago study on social marketing of condoms in UP.
My father in law is the mukhiya of this village. How can I go and ask for the pills from the centre – if he comes to know, he will beat me (the father-in-law)
My mother in law found out that my husband was using a condom. And she threatened to commit suicide. Ater that, we stopped.
Not just husband, but the mother-in-law and father-in-law in control of the woman’s reproductive life. Everyone but the woman herself. (Did Shashi Tharoor’s Priscilla in Riot die because she helped a muslim woman abort her baby?)
The communication focus – another thing I have believed – that the focus of communication realting to population control programs has been long term and macro focus – concepts like crossing the billion mark and growth in GPD are as irrelevant to me as an individual as they are to the illiterate woman in the village – they hardly touch my now-and-here.
I came across this paper – Family Welfare Programme and Population Stabilization Strategies in India which argues for a welfare focus in population control programs. Some thoughts from that…
It is being argued that macro development, which had been emphasized in the early debate on population and development, is not directly relevant unless it is beneficial for improving the individual’s quality of life. Vijayanunni (1994:193) concludes that what is important is not overall development through large-scale projects and programmes, the benefits of which reach the common man/woman only indirectly and after a long gestation period, but welfare-loaded policies and programmes which impart direct and immediate benefits to the people – these include role of literacy, status of women, child health programs.
And finally the political angle – here is where we come close to the conspiracy theory that I started out with. Somewhere very early on in the policy years, the population control program acquired a strong and agressive target focus. Result – sterilization became the “preferred method”. And I am not even talking about Sanjay Gandhi’s ideas about sterilization here.
Was this the beginning if the undoing of any good that communication programs with a softer, welfare-oriented programs could do – given time?
Unfortunately, over the years, the target has become an end in itself and not the means to bring about a decline in the birth rate (Bose, 1989:186). In order to fulfil targets, it was inevitable that a great deal of drafting and mobilization of personnel from other “nation-building” activities would be required for the sake of the family planning programme. However, these personnel were not equipped to deal with such sensitive areas as those related to individual family life. So the kind of persuasion and pressure applied by these people was very crude, lacking the human touch. Sterilization of unmarried men. Repeat procedures. Operations performed under threat and coercion, and bribes.
I know what a problem it is for many social researchers going into villages to speak with the women. This is what an expert had told me when I interviewed her for my disseratation.
I had to open my bag and show that I was not carrying any instrument – it was literally like hands up, see no weapons!
They were turning hostile… if I only want to speak to the women, why do I want to take them alone to a separate room?
…and to top that the abortions and ultrasounds with the unborns … where are we heading to ?
Charu, I think you’re right in asking if the aggressive tone of earlier campaigns screwed up things for the quieter, likely more effective campaigns. What’s the way forward? I’d be interested in hearing about any innovative population campaigns you might know of. Have you heard of Population First, do you know what they are up to?
Some years ago I ran into a very telling little statistic. I can’t remember the exact numbers now, but it went something like this. It was a table of the mean age at which a woman got married, ranked by the amount of education she had had. So women who had never been to school got married at about, let’s say, 17 years old (told you I don’t remember the numbers). Women who had spent one year in primary school got married at something like 20 years old. So just that one year of education meant three less years in which she was likely to have a child — therefore potentially two or three less babies. I’m putting it badly, but I trust you’ll get the point. I found that fascinating.
Hi Charu
When you mentioned at the top that many African Americans believe in health care conspiracies against them. There was a infamous incident called the Tuskegee Syphilis Study in which many black people were secretely denied proper medical cares to test treatments of syphilis. African Americans have a right to be suspicious. (Spam Filter: please be kind).
Charu…….I would really like to read a post about details of successful family planning efforts in India (if you know of any during your research or otherwise).
With the few groups I’ve known, they invariably face huge hostility or superstition or aggression in any family planning efforts. This is often due to a number of urban (or in many of these cases rural) legends, or mistakes of the past (where often government officials had taken an exceedingly harsh line, like what you point out in your article).
Sadly, I haven’t yet met any really successful effort……
Michael, spam filter just does not like you. I have to keep diving into the deep end to rescue your comments each time.
Incidentally, the Time article mentions the Tuskegeee incident – but I did not know the background to it. Thanks for this pointer. This is really sad.
Dilip, I remember reading about Population First when they launched a few years ago – corporate involvement and all that fanfare. Nothing after that. I checked out their website after you mentioned it. they sem to have some interesting programs ging on – but I have no idea how effective they are.I am planning to meet someone from there soon and understand their projects better…
The paper I have linked to here has some informative tables discussing the role certain demographic factors – literacy rate, poverty level, infant mortality rate, percentage of women in employmentand so on – with the success of such programs.
Sunil, I would like to hear of some success stories too. I amsure there are some… Am doing some secondary research on it, now that I have started this discussion. Will post soon if I come across anything.
@mit, yes sex selection and female feoticide. depressing. the woman powerless to either keep the baby she wants or not have the baby she does not want.