India and China, the world's two most populous nations, have taken divergent paths to addressing the enormous problems posed by their growing populations. And as India officially breaks through the one-billion ceiling on Thursday, comparisons with its giant neighbor are inevitable.
Both countries entered new eras at roughly the same time, with India gaining independence in 1947 and China coming under Communist rule in 1949. Both also had fertility rates in excess of six births per woman of child-bearing age. In India, that rate is now below 3.5, while China's "One Child" policy has brought its official rate down to 1.5.
China's success has sometimes been cited as evidence of India's failure to implement an effective population growth policy, as are various studies forecasting that India will surpass China as the world's most populous nation by 2040. But Indian experts say the comparison is fundamentally flawed, as it fails to take into account the fact that India's democratic system prevented the imposition of a coercive family planning policy as followed by China. "In a democratic set-up, I do not think a Chinese-style one-child policy would ever be viable," said demographer Leela Visaria, coordinator of Healthwatch, a national non-government organisation created after the 1994 UN Cairo conference on population. "India's national goal of stabilising the population growth rate cannot be imposed. Other ways need to be found to make people aware of why more children does not spell more security."
At the weekend, China said it would maintain its strict one-child policy with a view to limiting its population to a peak of 1.6 billion in the middle of the century. A Communist Party directive said China would keep the average population birthrate under 1.5 percent per year, and that the country would move to zero growth by mid-century if the policy was enforced.
Since the 1980s, China has enforced its policy with fines, social penalties and even forced sterilizations for those who break the law. India's experiment with a coercive program of forced vasectomies during emergency rule in the late 1970s led to widespread protests and set back the family-planning program by almost a decade. "It was a complete disaster, which had very damaging consequences," said M.L. Sharma, director of projects at the Family Planning Association of India. "Men, who had previously attended contraceptive-use program, disappeared from the scenario because of the focus on vasectomies, and it took years for the pyschosis to disappear."
Sharma and other experts argue that a policy based on incentives or disincentives can only have a limited reach in India, where the central government lacks the pervasive socio-economic control exerted by its Chinese counterpart. "On the other hand, if India could demonstrate the same will, determination and commitment of the Chinese government in addressing population control, we could make a lot of progress," Sharma said.
While India has moved in recent years towards a target-free policy that treats family planning as only one component of an overall reproductive health program, incentives do exist. A new program approved by the cabinet earlier this year included a family welfare-linked health insurance scheme for couples who undergo sterilization after having two children.
However, the government moved quickly to reject any suggestion that the incentives amounted to a coercive policy. "There will be no coercion, no force," said A.R. Nanda, the head of the government's family welfare department. "The main difference between the Indian and Chinese population policies is that the political structure in India is very different from that in China," said Tarun Kumar Roy, director of the state-run Indian Institute for Population Studies.
"We are a democratic country and issues such as family planning have to be handled with great care. China can go ahead unmindful of this aspect."
