RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s call for begetting more child has abominably exposed his lack of moral conviction and monotheist demeanour. Any narrative ought to have a strong and tenable logical base. Else, it would be treated not more than a trash. Like all his previous sermons, this too utterly lacks rationality. It manifests his intellectual bankruptcy. This impression gets more reinforced with his pushing for national population policy (NPP). He ought to have clarified why India needs NPP.
The Population Policy was formulated in 2000 with the view to address the needs of reproductive and child health, and to stabilize the population. At the time of framing the policy, the bureaucrats had outlined that it would address the need for family planning and providing integrated services for reproductive and child health care, achieving fertility rate 2.1 by 2010, and population stabilization by 2045 and also making reproductive health care accessible and affordable for all. This also included the basic need for increasing the provision of primary and secondary education and empowering women and improving their employment opportunities. The most fundamental suggestion was to promote delayed marriage for girls, not earlier than 18 and preferably after 20 years of age.
Will Bhagwat clarify that his saffron government led by Narendra Modi has been successful in implementing the basic outlines of the policy. Bhagwat has been going around telling the women that beget more. Fine. Has his government made reproductive health care accessible in the rural areas, which incidentally witness high rate of birth? Whether Modi has reached education to the girls? Under World Bank and IMF pressure some initiatives were made to increase the enrolment of the girls in schools and for making it appear to be a success some governments also provided cycles, books and dress. But soon the scheme lost the relevance and become a means for the bureaucrats to mint money.
Under his policy Bhagwat and other RSS leaders want the women to turn into a reproductive machine. Some leaders abhor the idea of delayed marriage. They are right; a young girl will beget more. Undeniably for Bhagwat and other RSS leaders, the women are not the creators of economic wealth; their economic empowerment will not help strengthen a country’s economy.
Since Bhagwat is a staunch believer of Manu Smriti, role of women, classified as shudras, has no importance. He does not feel that there is need for empowering women. Probably he holds the view that the men who constitute fifty percent of the population are sufficient for the economic development of the country. His thrust on betting more also underlines that he nurses flawed understanding about the role of the women. He ought to know that women would participate in the labour market, which increases productivity and economic output. Women-led businesses contribute to job creation and wealth generation. Women’s economic empowerment can help address some of the root causes of poverty. Since he is boss of RSS, he must also k now the bare fact that women’s economic empowerment builds stronger safety nets for when economic uncertainty hits and their economic empowerment increases income equality for shared prosperity.
Bhagwat ought to realise that women have rights on their bodies. Both leaders Congress’s Rajya Sabha MP Renuka Chowdhury and CPI(M) leader Brinda Karat are questioning his suggestion. Renuka said: “Bhagwat is saying produce more children. Are we rabbits that we will keep reproducing? How many children do the people who are talking have?”. Brinda rightly alleged; “Bhagwat’s remarks were an attempt to “instrumentalise women’s bodies and choices”. Bhagwatji and his kin should stop instrumentalising women’s bodies and their choices about having children to suit his agenda.”
One thing is absolutely apparent; the saffron leaders do not share uniform perception on population control. While Bhagwat is against any control, once his senior pracharak, Narendra Modi decried “population explosion” in his Independence Day speech last year and even went up to equating population control to patriotism: “A small section of society, which keeps its families small, deserves respect. What it is doing is an act of patriotism”. It would be better for Bhagwat to sort out internal differences and evolve a common policy on this issue.
It is universally known that population control is the practice of regulating the size of a population through policies, rewards, and punishments. The goal is to maintain stability and address economic challenges. India suffers massive unemployment; job loss has become perennial. Ironically his saffron government has failed to ameliorate the economic declining situation.
One basic aspect of the problem, which probably Bhagwat did not raise wilfully, is the resolve of the middle class, incidentally support base for RSS and BJP, not to reproduce more than two kids. The fall in child birth primarily owes to their economic compulsion. RSS’s magazine Organiser has published an editorial on population that spoke of “regional imbalance” in terms of South Indian states doing better on population control than the North. However it came out with absolutely ridiculous observation that due to this, they were losing demographic advantage in an electoral democracy. It is absolutely not clear what the magazine meant by “losing demographic advantage”.
It is a known fact that Bhagwat suffers from acute Islamophobia. Though he has been using nice words for them, basically all his moves are aimed to harm the Muslims. He has turned panicky of growth of Muslim population. According to working paper by the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister the share of the Hindu population decreased by 7.82% between 1950 and 2015 in India, while that of Muslims increased by 43.15%. This figure is manufactured.
According to the government data, the fertility rate for Hindus stands at 1.94. Among Scheduled Castes (SCs), it is 2.08 and among Scheduled Tribes (STs) it is 2.09. For the Other Backward Classes (OBCs), the TFR is 2.02, almost comparable to the national rate, while for non-SC/ST, non-OBC castes it stands at 1.78. If the TFR has not declined how could population percentage decline so sharp? More over bit ought to be take care that Modi did not deliberately release the 2011 census report. Sources maintain that according to the census, which is yet to be published, the Hindu population has not declined.
Bhagwat’s “clarion call” to increase the Hindu population is more conjured by political reasons that demographic compulsions. He is applying saffron colour to confuse the Hindus. It is worth mentioning that in 2013, at an event in Kochi, RSS general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale had said “bigger Hindu families” would prevent minorities “from gaining the upper hand” in population in certain parts of the country. He added that elite Hindus should “seriously review family planning”. Even in 2015, Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Champat Rai had said that family planning “was no more a personal matter for Hindus”. He went on to suggest that “if they continued to remain content with one child, Muslims would take over the country”.
India’s population has more than tripled in the six decades following Partition, from 361 million (36.1 crore) people in the 1951 census to more than 1.2 billion (120 crore) in 2011. As of 2020, India gains roughly 1 million (10 lakh) inhabitants each month, according to the United Nations Population Division. This increase must have Hindus. Even after this, Bhagwat wants us to believe that Hindu population is on decline. Growth rates have declined for all of India’s major religious groups, but the slowdown has been more pronounced among religious minorities. In percentage terms, India’s six largest religious groups have remained relatively stable since Partition. In the projected scenario, as of 2020 about 15% of Indians are Muslim (14.2% in the 2011 census), 79% are Hindu (79.8% in 2011). (IPA Service)
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