Role of NGOs in Development

NGOS in Development

The non-party political processes of the late 1960s and 1970s centred around radicalised youth, student groups, especially from Christian organisations in southern and Western India. Influenced by liberation theology that emanated in Latin America, these Christian groups along with student unions, NSS etc. formed themselves into Action Groups, known as Community Action Groups or Social Action Groups. These could no longer operate as earlier institutions like missions, trade unions and mass organisations. They also needed a legal identity to enable them to receive funds. The chosen forum of institution was the Society or Association formed under the Societies Registration Act. These were legally identified with the earlier welfare and charity institutions, which were called NGOs or non-governmental organisations. Some of these organisations such as VISTAS in Maharashtra and Association for the Rural Poor in Tamil Nadu, took up ‘conscientisation’ (the method of raising political consciousness of the oppressed, developed by Paulo Freire, the Brazilian educationist) programmes. The Naxalite movement in Andhra Pradesh formulated the concept of ‘Sangham’ adopted by some NGOs like the CROSS in Hyderabad.

While there is no universal definition and form of NGO, traditionally the term referred to social welfare organisations, including the Lions Club or Rotary. Later, the term included Action Groups which needed a formal structure to administer their funds and therefore registered under the Societies Registration Act or Public Trust Act. This enabled them to receive funds from various donor agencies-national and international. As considerable amounts poured into these groups in the 1980s, the government promulgated the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act. From the mid-1980s, the government also started using these organisations to implement developmental programmes, first through CAPART and then through various social welfare ministries. The term NGO became increasingly associated with organisations ‘contracting development programmes’. Small groups grew in size, finances, and visibility. The result is the emergence of an NGO sector today.

NGOs as Developmental Agencies

In most of Third World countries, and India, in particular, non-governmental organisations are now playing an important role in the developmental processes. The globalisation of economies of the world within the neo-liberal framework has ushered in an era of global markets and the creation of an organisation-World Trade Organisation (WTO)-that is to regulate, set up new rules of global trade and commerce. The new critical approach to development has shifted focus from structure (state) to actors (civil society). The top-down approach has been displaced by bottom-up community participatory approach. Micro-local actors and projects that were to ‘empower’ people i.e. facilitate people’s own developmental efforts is now the order of the day. The NGOs have become the mediators in these efforts. The state is now seen as an ‘enabling state’, that is to say, a state that would facilitate ‘marketising’ of the economy and the state itself would withdraw or play a limited role in the economy. NGOs are now an important part of the civil society and legitimate negotiators on behalf of the people. The World Bank reports on development acknowledge NGOs as part of the civil society and often negotiate with them on the implementation of various important programmes.

The new economic policies heralded in the early 1990s in India acknowledge the role of NGOs in implementing developmental programmes. A plethora of NGOs operate in Andhra Pradesh in various fields-for removal of urban poverty, slum improvement, for providing livelihood for women etc. The state itself has formed an NGO funded by the World Bank-the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty etc.

With the processes of globalisation since 1990s, the NGOs are seen as important actors in the implementation of structural adjustment programmes of the World Bank and IMF. Privatisation policies and the withdrawal of the state from important sectors of the economy have made the state dependent on the NGOs for implementing developmental programmes. NGOs have become professional, managerial bodies with structures and organisations that do not concern themselves with power, politics, and state but with ‘delivery systems’ for structural adjustment. NGOs have also been accused of lack of accountability and transparency. As receivers of funds from outside, often their accountability is to the donor agencies. Very large NGOs are not accountable to either government bureaucracy or peoples representatives. The National Dairy Development Board is an example. The centralising trend initiated by large NGOs is exhibited not just in large scale dairying that is penetrating rural areas in more and more regions but also in the even more larger terrains of forestry, dry land farming, wasteland development and other new avenues of colonising the vast hinterland of village India and tribal hinterland. To this end, a Society for Promotion of Wastelands Development (SPWD) was formed in 1982, with the collaboration of Ford Foundation and the Central government. Thus government NGOs or GO-NGOs became tools for a new delivery system. Another example of such NGOs with inspiration from donor agency is the World Bank funded Watershed Development, and Joint Forest Management Programmes (JFM). Today there is a criticism that the JFM has degenerated into a form of labour sub-contracting of the work of the Forest Department to the members of the Vana Samrakshana Samithis (VSS). Today, most ‘North’ donor agencies have shifted their focus to lobbying and advocacy as the most civil forms of delivering social justice and equity and calling the shots-child labour, Northern Environmental Concerns, AID & Human Rights, Democratisation and Governance.

NGOs today are a fact of the developmental, socio-political scene. The initial enphoria of the 1960s when they were radical enough to challenge the corrupt and authoritarian state has slowly waned. Today a number of NGOs are implementing government projects when governments and state are fast losing their autonomy. Andhra Pradesh is an example par excellence where the World Bank inspired programmes are contracted by the government which in turn sub­contracts to the NGOs. The Livelihoods Programme supported by the British DFID for urban poverty alleviation and the programme for rural poverty elimination under the Society for the Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP) supported by the World Bank are interpretations of government, international financiers, and NGO collaboration.

NGOs and Social Movements

The diversity of activities of NGOs makes their classification somewhat complex. NGOs cannot be discussed without mentioning other non-party political processes as these are part of the same continuum with interplay, interrelationships and contradictions. A first distinction that is made is between charitable and other organisations from the point of view of their activities and historical perspective. While it is not difficult to distinguish NGOs from political institutions, it is with mass-based and popular issue based initiatives, with loose institutional forums that problems, perspectives, roles and process emerge. The most important distinction is made between NGOs and people’s movements. NGOs are institutional in nature receiving funds from donor agencies from outside and governed by long term perspectives. People’s movements are perceived as organised struggles by affected communities with a focus on immediately perceived needs and threats and a more personal involvement of the leadership.

One of the key developments that took place in the1970s was the emergence of Civil Liberties groups. The emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi government and state repression have given rise to human rights groups-some with radical Marxist perspectives and some within the liberal framework. These groups became meeting ground for interaction between NGOs and individuals who otherwise had serious differences on perspectives. For example : Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee (APCLC), Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), Peoples Union for Democratic Rights etc. As Human Rights became an important issue, today a number of NGOs have a human rights desk which take up issues of violations even if in a limited framework, or collaborate, support human rights organisations which are more peoples movements than NGOs.

People’s movements have also evolved into NGOs which play a crucial role at the macro-level in projecting the rights of the marginalised communities. An example is the fishermen’s movement. The efforts of the movement were aimed at protecting the rights of traditional fish workers of Kerala threatened by the introduction of mechanised craft and turning the self employed men into wage labourers. The movement developed a large support base, and was able to engage within a struggle against international interests that were pressurising India to open its massive resources to the detriment of both the traditional fishing communities and the mechanised industry. The movement spread to various fishermen’s belts throughout the country and the National Fishermen’s Forum was formed. The Forum is one of the first success stories of unionisation in the unorganised sector.

A number of NGOs have emerged out of people’s movements centred on dalits, tribals and women. It was in 1972 that a radical group in Maharashtra constituted the dalit panthers, modelled after the black groups in the US The emphasis was on cultural assertion and self-respect with a central role to protect dalit literature. Today an NGO-DAPPU in Andhra Pradesh is an umbrella organisation of several dalit groups. The National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR), Dalit Women’s charter of rights and demands, and various other dalit organisations have renewed the debate on caste.

Another social movement of the 1960s and 1970s that has implications for political processes and more particularly for developmental issues is the women’s movement. Gender today is an important analytical category for political and developmental processes. NGOs are deeply involved in women’s issues and development thanks mainly to a strong women’s movement and the emphasis on such programmes by donor agencies. The shift in discourses from ‘women in development’ to ‘Gender and Development’ to women, environment and development has contributed to the critique of enlightenment ideology and development concepts based on Western standards and rallies. While strongly opposing destructive development projects, as well as the new economic policies (neo-liberal policies and globalisation) many women’s groups have been working with other movements on alternatives based on principles of democracy, social justice, peace and environmental sustainability. Today, practically all NGOs have a Gender desk or gender aspects included in their project work.

In India, peace issues have not been predominant in the development agenda of NGOs. The Movement in India for Nuclear Disarmament (MIND) was formed in 1984. The Balliapal Movement against Missile Test firing range, the Anti-Kalga Nuclear Plant Movement came into confrontation with the military industrial complex. The increasing communal hatred has also led movements against communalism and fundamentalism. Communalism combat, a publication that counters communal hatred has also led movements against communalism and fundamentalism. Post-Pokhran is witnessing a new anti-nuclear and peace movement.

An area where non-governmental initiatives have played an important role is peace and security. For instance, transfrontier collaboration in the anti-slavery campaign began among the Quakers in the 18th Century; cross-national peace movements have flowered periodically since the middle of the 19th Century. Today institutional frameworks for cross-border contact are phenomenal in number. According to a conservative count, these were close to IGOs, over 17,000 INGOs in the 1980s, including cross-border associations in the professions, international foundations of political parties, transnational academic bodies, press groups, to international foundations and other service organisations etc. A significant feature of post-Cold War international relations in several parts of the world has been the emergence of dialogues, training, research and exchange programmes which focus on issues ranging from economic cooperation and social issues to political security matters. For example, in South Asia while cooperation in the areas of both economic and security relations is moving at a comparatively slower pace, NGOs and social activists are using the concept “Track Three” which refers to activities that focus on contemporary policy issues which explicitly function apart from or beyond government (e.g., the Pakistan-India Forum for Peace and Democracy).

Classification of NGOs

NGO activities can be classified into a number of broad domains :

a) relief and charity b) development c) mobilisation and organisation d) politics e) political education.

The organisational classification is :

a)   Development and charity groups

b)   Action-groups involved primarily in the processes of conscientisation and mobilisation of the oppressed without any stated political perspective or some time even anti-political.

c)   Political groups with political perspectives and goals.

d)   Pre-party political formations with the purpose of graduating to political parties.

e)   Support groups carrying out specialised tasks of bringing out journals, documentation and resource centres, lawyers forums etc.

This classification is not an exhaustive one as there can be other variables or mixed groups.The sources of inspiration for voluntary organisations have been Gandhian, Socialist and Marxist or neo-Marxist. While the Gandhian inspiration built on the experience of the freedom struggle is directed to help the rural masses to achieve their economic and social freedom, the socialist school inspired by Ram Manohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan has also been historically active and suspicious of the state and Nehruvian model of development.

The Marxist and neo-Marxist perspective inspired left parties to set-up voluntary organisations with some ideological frameworks. The relations between the NGOs and political parties are not uniform. Some of the Marxists view NGOs as agents of imperialists. In Maharashtra, the Kashta-Kari Sanghatana, with a strong rural base among tribals of Dahanu, north of Bombay, was targeted by the CPM cadre who felt threatened by the inroads made by the Sanghatana into the left constituency. Similarly in North Andhra Pradesh, another organisation SAMATHA was targeted by the PWG and the organisers of the NGO had to stop their work, first in East Godavari and then in Visakhapatnam district. This happened just after the organisation had won a resounding victory for the local tribal communities in their struggle against the collusion of the government with an industry to set-up a commercial complex against the wishes of the local community, flouting the existing laws.

NGOS, STATE AND CIVIL SOCIETY

NGOs and government share similar concerns of poverty alleviation. However, the scale of NGOs is much smaller but more focused and with an explicit concern with participation. While some NGOs tackle the symptoms of poverty-low educational levels, ill-health etc., others concentrate on enhancing the asset position and income earning potential of the poor through land improvement schemes, credit and skills training. Nevertheless there are NGOs who attempt to politicise poor people thereby challenging directly many of the social and economic structures established by the State. Since 1980s, new kind of NGOs providing support services to other NGOs in the form of training, evaluation and documentation have emerged and are usually funded by core grants from foreign donors and from payments for staff training from individual NGOs.

There are NGOs which receive funds from the government and there are those that receive funds from foreign donors. India’s Seventh Five Year Plan (1985-90) provided for an active involvement of NGOs in the planning process with a massive increase in the volume of government funds (i.e. to Rs.1,500 million per year or US $ 170 million). Most of these funds were for NGOs to work in government programmes such as afforestation, primary health care, education, rural housing etc. NGO relations with government are not always cordial. For those NGOs receiving funds from abroad, the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act (FCRA, 1976) regulates the receipt of funds and all such organisations have to register with the Home Ministry and submit audited accounts. Approximately 90 per cent of NGOs funding in India comes from foreign sources, mainly from International NGOs. In India with a tradition of self-government the suspicions with which foreign funded NGOs are regarded are not always ill founded as a number of these, flush with funds, appear to have the best of both-of being social workers with ‘fat salaries and sometimes comfortable bank balances’.

The legitimacy of these organisations dependent on foreign funds to develop villages is questionable to many and suspect as agencies of imperialism to some. Barring a few success stories such as the Chipko movement or the campaign against the Forest Bill, voluntary organisations failed to build up any effective national campaigns on issues such as Bhopal disaster. In the Western world, the NGOs and voluntary agencies are regarded as social welfare organisations and play a complimentary role. They are recognised for their organisational and managerial efficiency. However, in the Third World countries such as India, their role is somewhat different due to the very nature of post-coloniality of the state and society. The question is not one of efficient implementation of policies but one of structural transformation-local and non-local-of changing the political power relations of state and society and changing the relations with the external. This hinges on the crucial question of development of capitalism in the periphery.

The failure of developmental models and the crisis of economies in the 1970s were attributed to the failure of state and governance. States were seen as too weak to transform the civil society or as obstructive to economic development. The idea of good governance in the neo­liberal economic model is associated with the withdrawl of state from particularistic intervention in the economy and a freeing of civil society through greater reliance on NGOs, better training of civil service, decentralisation to remove obstacles to development, preferential access of the wealthier (and therefore educated) sections of society to decision making process etc. NGOs posit themselves as better equipped institutions to remove obstacles to development or take on developmental activities as is increasingly evident. They differ from the state non-market economy by the fact that they can choose more freely their staff, can impose commitment beyond formal execution of assigned tasks and have to justify themselves in order to ensure the flow of external resources. With the result, their performance is continuously evaluated. From the point of view of political economy, NGOs can influence criteria for funds. As developmental discourse includes ‘culture’ as an important variable, NGOs have successfully incorporated the language of ‘culture’ identities’ and the discourse of ‘civil’ society.

While these efforts might have the impact of democratising the civil society and thereby perhaps the State, the very agenda of aid of the donor agencies is one of creating an environment conducive to neo-liberal reforms. The inevitable contradictions of such reforms aimed at ‘good governance’, rolling back the state have had the most undesirable results for most Third World countries. While NGOs may be critical of the policies of the IMF/WB, their ability to reverse these is doubtful. The reform policies and the presence of foreign funded organisations in the South have critical implications for state and society.

The NGOs generally avoid confrontation with the state despite their radical discourse. This may be for very obvious reasons of losing permission from the Home Ministry for funds (FCRA). The methods and style of functioning of the NGOs often render them suspect in the eyes of the local people. The ‘target groups’ over whom/with whom they do project work cover small sections, nor is the project work political enough. By negotiating with the government and by providing welfare measures through its funds, the NGOs often depoliticise issues and blunt the edge of people’s struggles. The ‘professionalism’ of NGOs seems to fit well with the “managerial discourse” of the World Bank and the IMF; managerial efficiency and professionalism are preferable to political activism. As the NGOs provide employment to substantial numbers of the middle class, rural and urban, they do help without being an answer to the problem of unemployment. The shift in the recent years from the centre to the local/region in the Indian federal polity has given rise to a localism boom. The reason, atleast partly, it is argued, lies in the rise of NGOs.

 Future Perspectives

The new social movements of the 1960s and the 1970s have given rise to the discourse of civil society. The hitherto marginalised sections-the tribals, dalits, women raised questions with regard to the state and exercise of state power that in turn gave rise to new articulations of nations and nation-states. The NGOs by lending support and funding them have institutionalised some of these movements; at the same time they had the impact of depoliticising them. The shift from class struggles, people’s movements to groups, project work, net working etc, has blunted the edge of these struggles. However, it would be wrong to say that all NGOs are alike. There are NGOs which are sensitive to the local needs and cultures and do not impose themselves on the people. Several individuals sympathetic to peoples struggles (for example the dalit and women’s movements) support them. It is important to recognise the kind of social changes that are now being witnessed and NGOs contribute to this change. However, the globalisation processes, the dominance of the market forces indicate that the global agendas are set by the TNC, IMF and World Bank creating a culture of capital and shaping consumer citizens the world over. Would the NGOs contribute to this process or counter it by taking ideological positions? What would be the nature of social transformations the world over, and what kind of a state, economy and civil society would they create? A question that pertains to the ‘histoire de longue duree’-Long term history.

SUMMARY

Contemporary world witnesses the rise of a plethora of international organisations involving the cooperation of both states/governments and non-governmental units/actors. These organisations perform various kinds of functions, dealing with a variety of issues. Their classification is based on their membership and structures. International non-governmental organisations are those organisations in which governments and states are not members. Yet, they operate within and across national boundaries and are subject to the restrictions of national governments. Non­governmental organisations (NGOs) as voluntary organisations have grown in number operating in a variety of areas. From the 1960s, we witness the rise of new social movements which have played an important role in activising the civil society. NGOs have contributed to institutionalising these movements and as development agencies, they have contributed to the rise of an NGO sector. Classification of NGOs and their functions is a complex one. Any assessment of NGOs must be based on this transparency as receivers of funds from outside, as deliverers of goods and their contribution to the assertion of rights of marginalised sections of the society. Despite the increasing assertiveness of NGOs role, they cannot be a substitute to states and governments. Globalisation does not abolish states but the boundaries of state power may be reworked. 

Population and Development

  Population and Development

1 Introduction

Conventionally in India, the study of population is understood to be the concern of demographers and, at the most, of government census officials who bring out the Census of India Report once in ten years. Population studies, however, is more than just keeping count of numbers, or of births and deaths. It presents an overview of the socio-economic condition of society and is relevant in determining its course of social and economic development. The Census is a mammoth exercise, a long drawn out process of collecting data on the number of persons in India with an assemble of information on the socio-economic status of the population. With every census, routine concerns have been raised and pronouncements made over the issue of over-population, levels of poverty and unemployment, and social inequities. The significance and importance of population studies to the understanding of society as a whole, that is, the social, economic and political spheres of life, has attracted the interests of experts from various disciplines. Concomitantly, the study of population has been marked by controversies, conflicts of opinion and long-standing debates on the desired course of development for the country.

For long, a major global concern has been the overpopulation of the world. High population rates in the so called developing countries (primarily Asian and African countries), it is argued, adds to the global crises of providing for more persons from the limited and already over-exploited natural resource base on earth. There are various perspectives on the understanding of the global crises and the issue of overpopulation. According to some experts, the hype associated with the role of overpopulation in aggravating the global crises is overstated. The overemphasis on population as the cause for the crises, they argue, shift the focus from other structural reasons for over and wasteful utilisation of natural resources by the advanced countries. In this context, the development debate gains significance and brings to light the politics around the population question.

2 Historical Background

Thomas Malthus’ work Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) is considered as the pioneering work on population in which he explicated the fundamental theory of population growth. According to the theory, population grows at a much faster rate than what the natural resources can provide for. The number of people doubles every 25 years if unchecked and thus grows at a geometric rate (1,2,4,8, etc.) while food production increases at an arithmetic rate (1,2,3,4,5, etc). And given the limited natural resource base, there will be a shortage of food supply. This gap between the rates of increase of population and food supply creates what he termed as ‘positive’ conditions such as wars, famines and epidemics that act as checks against overpopulation. He was against the use of birth control methods and abortion to check population. He suggested some ‘preventive’ checks for overpopulation like prolonged celibacy and late marriage.

Malthus proposed his theory at a time when Europe was experiencing a decline in death rates due to improvements in medicine and an overall industrial growth. Subsequently there was a rapid growth of population in Europe, but the spread of industry and acquisition of colonies accommodated the growing population. Moreover, between the years 1800 and 1930, an estimated 400 million migrated from Europe to North America in search of better opportunities of work. Europe experienced ‘depopulation’ rather than ‘overpopulation’. America was concerned about the rise in population, largely because of the influx of migrants as well as the high rate of fertility among them. America came up with strict immigration policies, which was resented by some European countries, as it closed doors to greater economic opportunities. France was the first country to experience a fall in birth rates around 1800 and her low fertility rate was considered as one of the reasons for her defeat against Prussia in 1870. Government efforts were made to deal with the problem in 1919 when a separate Council was established as a part of the Ministry of Health to suggest remedial action. The government introduced a number of measures to encourage larger families. Family allowances were granted to assist wage earners with large families. In 1923, the law against abortion was amended to make it more effective.

Other European countries too registered low birth rates, which led to pro­natalist measures (measures to keep the locals at home) in countries like Italy and Germany. For example in Italy, strict laws against abortion and birth control measures and emigration were introduced. In Nazi Germany, marriage loans were extended to couples to start families. A feature, which was already in place in Italy and France. The pro-natalist measures related well to the Fascist and Nazi propaganda of the time and took on ethnic and racist hues. Considerations of race and science led to the emergence of eugenics, a political movement and a philosophy that dominated Europe in the early twentieth century, particularly in Germany under Hitler. Eugenics is the selective breeding of the supposedly ‘superior’ human genes to improve the quality of the human

Demographic considerations dominated many of the fears and consequent policy measures in Europe till the end of World War II. Population concerns became internationalised with the League of Nations (between 1900 and 1914) taking up issues of birth control and immigration for discussion in its various forums. Advocates of Malthus’ prophecy from countries such as France, Italy and Holland, debated over the relationship between overpopulation and war. According to them, population pressure was the major reason for international tensions and economic rivalry between countries as well as colonialism. Pro­natalist movements were viewed as expressions of disgruntlement with the lack of access to economic resources leading to racist and ethic rivalries. The Neo-Malthusians, in their various forums such as the British Malthusian League (1919) and the Sixth International neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference (1925) repeatedly pledged to restrict the birth rate so that people are able to live in comfort in their own country without feeling the need to expand their territorial base. The British Malthusian League adopted a resolution to deny membership to any country that did not pledge to restrict its birth rate.

      3 The Politics of Population Control: Environment and Gender

As discussed in the earlier section, scientific studies to evolve ways and techniques of engineering demographic transition in the developing world had been well established in the United States around the Second World War itself. The UN too had taken upon itself the task of encouraging third world countries to include birth control and family planning within its official responsibilities. The general perception was that the primary reason for underdevelopment and poverty in developing countries is overpopulation, in that whatever is produced is spent on feeding that many persons. This keeps the per capita incomes low and people are unable to come out of situations of poverty. They live in unhygienic conditions, have no access to education, health facilities, and family planning techniques, and have more children with the hope that there would be more persons to labour and earn a living. According to the neo-Malthusians, it is this vicious circle that perpetuates poverty and the only way to cut through this mesh is by controlling population growth.

This position is intolerant to the argument put forward by the third world countries that development is the best contraceptive. The idea being that with socio-economic development and consequent improvement in the standard of living, population rates will slow down. This, however, is unacceptable to the neo-Malthusians on the premise that the world cannot afford to wait that long, given the alarming rate at which the population is growing. The impatience has also grown with an increasing awareness about the global ecological crises. The ecologists have drawn attention to the limited carrying capacity of the earth and the limit to its resources, an idea central to Malthus’ thesis. The ecological movement, which gained momentum over the last century, has consistently predicted doom in the near future if the earth continues to be overexploited at the present rate. For the neo-Malthusians, this argument directly addresses the issue of overpopulation, that is, the overexploitation of the earth is a direct consequence of the larger number of people who feed on it.

This argument however has been criticised for being simplistic and factually incorrect. The industrialised nations, which account for less than 25% of the world population, account for 75% of the world’s energy use and two-thirds of green house gases that damage the ozone layer. The effects are global and affect everyone. Moreover, the third-world countries have been used as dumping grounds for the toxics and chemicals produced by the multinational companies of the advanced countries in the third world. Thus it seems that the source of the ecological crisis is not ‘overpopulation’ but ‘over consumption’. The crisis lies in the fact that the rate of reproduction of nature is slower than the rate of industrial production.

The neo-Malthusian position on poverty and population also fails to explore the role and extent of structural inequalities of class and status, unequal access to the means of production and a lack of structural reforms in the perpetuation of the conditions of poverty. The mechanisation of the hitherto labour intensive agricultural sector has accentuated class differences and hastened the marginalisation of the lower strata. In India, the Green revolution, a movement to increase food production and to realise the goal of food self-sufficiency in the country, was achieved through technological upgradation of the methods of agriculture and the introduction of high yielding variety of hybrid seeds. The example is of interest more so because it was introduced References to boost economic growth and agricultural production. Despite the immediate gains of the green revolution, it triggered off a series of social, economic and environmental complications. In the absence of land reforms, the commercialisation of agriculture benefited the rich farmers and created conditions of indebtedness among the poor farmers. The poor farmers did not have as much land or the financial resources to benefit from the green revolution.

As for the environmental consequences, the use of pesticides, chemical fertilisers and hybrid seeds have had a negative effect on the soil quality. In fact, commercial agriculture and the over utilisation of ground water has created conditions of drought all over India. The environmental crisis has put even the tried and tested route to development of the modern and advanced countries to question. The construction of large dams, monoculture plantations and commercial agriculture have not only created conditions of poverty, but also questioned the explicit faith in the dominant ideas of progress and development to bring about the appropriate demographic changes. The overexploitation of the environment has put a large section of the world population at risk. Millions of persons have lost their livelihoods, face severe health risks, and have been forced to migrate to the already overpopulated cities in search of alternative employment. The indigenous peoples across the world or tribes, as they are known in India, have collectively campaigned against the destruction of their natural habitats, which has cut into their source of livelihood and forced them to migrate in search of employment.

Studies on fertility and poverty reveal the complex relationship between poverty and the tendency to have more children. For one, unlike the neo-Malthusian belief, children are not viewed as liabilities but as assets. The motivation to have more children varies from class to class. Landless labourers, who depend on manual labour, and the poor farmers, who cannot afford mechanised alternatives to manual labour, prefer to have more children. Overpopulation then is not the cause of poverty, but perhaps or at the most a symptom. This is to say that having more children is not the reason for their impoverishment, but is a calculated, rational economic decision on their part. According to the ILO statistics, 1995, there are 250 million children in the age group of 4 - 14 years working for a living and 50% of them are employed full time (Bandarage 1997: 159). The World Development Report, 1984 further supports this argument through its findings in Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia and Turkey; children here are considered as investments, as persons who would take care of their parents in the future. This heavy reliance on children also demonstrates the absence and poor performance of other forms of institutional support structures and welfare programmes in the third world. Clearly a unidirectional focus on population cannot explain or ‘cure’ poverty and its persistence in the third world.

Another factor that needs to be discussed alongside the issue of overpopulation is the simultaneous prevalence of high rate of infant mortality and fertility in developing countries. An analysis of the reasons reveals structural factors for the same. The low status of women, lack of proper nutrition and personal health emerge as common reasons for high rates of infant mortality. Infant mortality only registers death of children in the first year of birth, while many of the children who do survive beyond the first year die due to lack of proper nutrition and care. In a system dominated by patriarchal values, which attaches greater value to a male child and recognises women primarily by their reproductive functions, the motivation for having many children is structural. In such a situation, women either lack the power to decide whether to have a child or not, or exercise their reproductive role in order to find acceptance in the system.

Contraceptives or other techniques of birth control have been misused to control women’s fertility. Thus instead of providing women greater control over their reproductive functions, birth control techniques have provided a means of controlling women’s bodies. The proliferation of illegal and private sex determination clinics all over India is the case in point. Female infanticide and termination of pregnancy to avoid having a girl child is a common practice. Similarly, in China, the resurgence of female infanticide and abandonment of children in the early 1980s was attributed to the pressure created by government’s family planning program. The fear is that the drop in the number in females will lead to other forms of exploitative practices against women such as revival of infant betrothal and new forms of sexual and economic slavery.

There is also a controversy over the politics of technology transfers from the first to the third world. The concern about population, and now HIV/AIDS, has also been viewed as a circuitous means of creating a market, or rather a “dumping ground” for many of the obsolete technologies, of the first world in the developing world. In such a scenario, is it good enough to control birth and bring down the population? Is it not important to address the ethical issues surrounding birth control technologies and the overdrive to check overpopulation without dealing with the larger structural dimensions of the problem? In order for family planning techniques and birth control measures to be meaningful, social and economic conditions of women have to be improved. By concentrating on women’s reproductive roles, women’s productive lives are not considered in comprehending their compulsions and the reproductive choices that they make.

4 INDIA: The Population Experience and Developmental Concerns

India was one of the first countries to recognise the population problem and adopt an official national programme on family planning in 1952. Concern over the rise in population in India started well before independence, in the 1930s. Between 1881 and 1931, India’s population grew from 27.7 million to 279.0 million; and between 1931 and 1940, it grew from 279.0 million to 318.7 million. The rise was phenomenal, from 10% in the first decade to a 14% in the second. This growth was unprecedented, primarily because of the measures taken to control epidemic and famine situations. The concern over the rise of population was more among the social reformers, intellectuals, and the Congress party than in the British government. The British government was cautious in raising the issue, as they had witnessed the reaction of people to birth control back in Britain and also because they did not want to create conditions of unrest among the Indians over the issue.

Most Congress workers, under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, were against birth control measures. The use of contraceptives was considered sinful; it was seen as a method to offset the procreative role of sex. But many leaders, scholars and trainees of the Indian Civil Service, who had been to England and were acquainted with the Malthusian theory, considered India as a likely casualty of the ‘positive’ checks — wars, famines and epidemics — due to overpopulation and poverty. The Neo-Malthusian League was established in Madras (present Chennai) as early as in 1929. The League brought out a propaganda journal titled The Madras Birth Control Bulletin. It was in Mumbai that birth control was for the first time seen not as a means to control the population, but as a method of liberating women from the frequent and difficult task of childbearing, preventing unwanted pregnancies, and improving the health of women. Professor R.D.Karve in Mumbai made it his life long mission to campaign for the rights of women and educate people about birth control. He later became the member of the Family Planning Association of India formed in 1949. In 1935, the All India Women’s Conference also took up the issue of birth control in the annual meeting held in Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala) and adopted a resolution to uphold birth control with the view to improve the status of women in society.

The Bengal famine, in which over 1.5 million people died, and the inquiry that followed brought to light the effect of a rising population on the economy and poverty. Similarly the Bhore Committee Report of 1949 also related issues of public health, sanitation, and prevention from communicable diseases with population control. Both the reports formed the foundation for the family planning programme after independence and its inclusion into India’s five-year development plans. The First Five-Year Plan (1951-6) stated its intention as follows, “the reduction of birth rate to the extent necessary to stabilize the population at a level consistent with the requirements of the national economy” (Srinivasan 1995: 30). Clearly, the intention was not just to reduce population, but also to stabilise population growth rate at a level that can be sustained by the national economy. But population control was pursued as an independent agenda, separate from the concerns of development and social change.

No numerical targets or demographic goals were set in the First and the Second Plan (1956-61) and people were expected to go to the clinics and seek family planning services. Besides providing the regular methods of birth control such as diaphragm, condoms, vaginal foam tablets, sterilisation services were also provided. The Third Plan (1961-66) replaced the clinic-oriented approach with an extension-education approach, which aimed at taking the message of birth control to the people instead of waiting for them to approach the government clinics. The message to the people was to adopt the small family

195

norm, which was not only a sensible choice in terms of giving their children a better future and improving the health of women, but also the need for building a healthy and prosperous country. The family planning programme was officially made a part of the public health departments and peripheral health workers such as the Auxiliary Nurses-Midwives (ANMs) were appointed in primary health centres to inform, motivate and encourage villagers to adopt family planning methods. By the Fourth Plan (1969-74), targets for sterilisation were set and camps were held to operate on people to meet targets. Although 61% of the target was achieved, population growth increased at the same rate, which perplexed policy makers and administrators.

It was in the Fifth Plan period (1974-79) that the National Population Policy (1976) was formulated. Concerted effort was made to improve the organisational structure of the health department and increase its efficiency in achieving family planning goals. Government offices, villages and urban centres were targeted for sterilisation. The Emergency that followed soon after, as per many analysts, brought out the uninhibited and obsessive side to this drive of bringing down the population. The emergency created a fear among people about forced sterilisation, and the newly elected Janata government changed its approach to pacify people’s fear regarding birth control. It adopted the term “family welfare” instead of “family panning” to suggest a malleable character of the programme. The concentration was now on educating people and thereby motivating them to adopt family welfare measures. A number of recommendations of the 1976 policy were nonetheless adopted. For example, the age of marriage of boys and girls was raised to 21 and 18 respectively. The Sixth Plan (1980-85) set long and short-term targets, which persisted through the Seventh Plan (1985-91); the long-term goals focussed on reducing the size of the family, the birth, infant mortality and death rates, while the short-term goal was to encourage sterilisation, use of Intra-Uterine Devices (IUDs) and other conventional contraceptives.

The Plans demonstrated, time and again, that enacting laws or implementing birth control programmes was unable to deliver the desired results. The deeper analysis of the population puzzle reveals that the accompanying measures to reduce poverty levels, economic and social disparities in the country were not effectively translated into practice. Most remained on paper; the goal of employment for all, improving the quality of life of people by providing efficient and regular basic services of education, health and sanitation, and water and most importantly strengthening the capacity of people to procure these services without difficulty are yet to be achieved. High population growth rate is found in the northern states of India in comparison to the rest of the country. Interestingly, Kerala, which is one of the states that has brought down its fertility rates, is still one of the most economically backward states in the country. The Kerala experience illustrates how economic growth is not the only important condition for population regulation. Infact, the case of West Bengal, the other communist stronghold in the country has not been able to achieve the success of Kerala, primarily due to the lack of attention given to female literacy.

An analysis of states like Goa, Kerala and Tamiladu, which have registered a drop in population growth, demonstrates other supposedly “extraneous” reasons for the same. Goa despite the strong presence of the church has never been averse to family planning propaganda. It has like Kerala always recorded high female literacy level. The age at marriage of women has been higher than the rest of India. Kerala with a communist state in power for over two decades in the State and a strong workers’ movement was able to direct economic and social change. Land reforms, regularisation of minimum wages in agriculture and the organised sectors, and premium attention to primary and secondary education ensured social justice and reduction of poverty levels, and thereby created conditions for fertility regulation and decline in population growth.

Tamilnadu’s experience reveals the role of a strong bureaucracy and political References will in popularising the family planning programmes. Known for the self-respect movement spearheaded by Periyar and his strong radical views on caste, status of women and education, marriage and contraception in the 1920s, the political and social climate was already set for implementing birth control programmes. The bureaucracy in Tamilnadu pioneered the family planning programmes and developed a comprehensive maternal and child welfare programme in the state. The ‘camp approach’ was also systematically institutionalised in the state. The programme was also decentralised to the district level and was made a special responsibility of the district administrators. Components of teaching or awareness building, extension or instructions about contraceptive services and ‘after care’ services to persons who undergo vasectomy was included in the programme. Popular initiatives (funded by International agencies) like midday meals for over 9 million school children, which also generated employment for over two hundred thousand women in the villages, further helped in building a mass base for the programme.

Evidently the supply driven services of fertility and population regulation have to be complemented by the principle of demand for these services. The demand or motivation for fertility regulation has to be created by concerned citizens, organisations and the government. Increasingly it is clear that a target-oriented programme of population control is narrow and does not address the larger social, political and economic issues that perpetuate conditions of poverty, illiteracy and ill health. Any policy framework for population control has to create favourable conditions for economic, social and political equality as well as environment friendly economic growth. Bureaucratic efficiency and good governance are also at the heart of a successful delivery system of health services. Unless this multi-pronged approach is adopted and implemented with right earnest, containing population growth will be difficult, if not impossible. The National Population Policy of India, 1994, explicitly argues for a pro-poor, pro-nature and a pro-women population programme, which views people as active partners in dealing with the population problem rather than the source itself. Initiatives by the Indian government to decentralise development concerns to the lowest levels of administration and thereby involving the elected representatives of the village councils and non-governmental organisations in implementing health programmes, as well as mainstreaming alternative medicine systems and health delivery systems within the government have been attempts to evolve a multi-pronged approach to population and development. The policy changes, however, have to be supported by a strong political will and a sense of social responsibility.

5 Conclusion

Sustainable Development

In this unit, the attempt is to move beyond statistics in understanding the issue of population growth. The issue of population control has always been surrounded by controversies. The first section illustrates how the population debate at its inception was closely associated with the social and economic changes in the western world. Religious orthodoxy, concerns of depopulation and the availability of labour and the overcrowding of urban centres and rising poverty plagued the debates on population growth. The attempt is to demonstrate the importance of ideological positions in the adoption of particular strategies in dealing with the issue of population.

The second section carries the debate further, as it evolved after the Second World War between the advanced countries and the newly independent nations of the third world. Over population was identified as the main reason for backwardness and poverty in the third world. While the third world believed that economic development would lead to a decline in the population rate, the same did not convince the advanced countries. The pressure to control population was mounted on the third world especially in the wake of the ‘limit to growth’ thesis, which argued that earth would not be able to sustain the ever-growing population on her limited resource base for long. The section also examines the implications of the population politics on women.

The third section traces the broad policy orientations on population in India and presented case studies to understand the reasons for the failure and success of the programmes in different parts of the country. Analyses revealed the role of larger structural and social reforms, and efficient government delivery systems as the underlying reasons for their success. These cases have prompted a countrywide debate on population, and some of issues have been included at least at the policy level. This unit traces the debate from its inception to the present with a view to addresses some of the issues that have contributed to its growth and intensity all over the world as well as in India.