I’ve been seeing so many posts on surrogacy that I thought this article, “India‘s Future May Depend on Eggs and Condoms,†was just the same. Imagine my surprise when it turns out to be about the plight of India’s children. After so many years of alarmism of India’s overpopulation, and blaming it as the cause of poverty (as opposed to its symptom), now India’s large population is often touted as its biggest asset, in terms of labour force and consumption patterns–termed the demographic dividend. Yet this article reminds us otherwise.
Four out of five toddlers in India are anemic. Less than half have received all recommended vaccines. The chances of a child’s survival — at least for the poorest 20 percent of the population — are worse than in Bangladesh or Vietnam.
Correcting the sad state of affairs will require a “massive increase in financial allocations,” a group of doctors, social workers and economists said in a recent report.
The working group on children under 6, set up at the behest of the government’s economic-planning agency, estimates the cost of reaching out to 80 million children and 10 million pregnant and breast-feeding women with daycare centers, medicines, counseling and nutrition — including eggs for a protein-rich diet — at 300 billion rupees ($7.6 billion) a year.
Hence the clever title, along with the author’s suggestion that family planning should be taken more seriously.
If the Indian government heeds the committee’s suggestion on cash grants for pregnant women, it should give an even bigger monetary award to women who delay childbirth.
The fewer the number of children born in extreme poverty, the smaller will be the problem of their neglect.
Population-control efforts in India have lost their urgency.
The fertility rate, which stands at 2.7 children per woman, is likely to miss the government’s target of 2.1 by 2010. And after India hits that rate, the population will still take another 35 years to stabilize.
I’m not sure I can disagree with less authoritarian family planning measures as those of the 70s and 80s were pretty horrible. Nevertheless, if the record growth of India’s economy does not reach the children born to those already on the margins, the future of India does not look bright.
See also this three part series from merinews
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