Whose Population Control needed?

I read a news item just now which made me search for similar reports from different newspapers. It’s about our Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad addressing the World Population Day function in New Delhi. As part of his speech, he provided two solutions for population control in India. First one was in a lighter vein, “If there is electricity in every village, people will watch TV till late night and then fall asleep. They won’t get a chance to produce children. When there is no electricity, there is nothing else to do but produce babies.” And secondly he also seriously suggested that we should promote late-marriage where boys and girls marry over the age of 30. Then he commented that Naxal problem in India was because of over-population. I wonder what would happen if we pass some of his unlearned personal opinion as government's official stand.

The Indian Express has come up with an article which is mind-blowing [Link]. It is not only brutal yet constructive in its criticism, but also is highly learned and informative. If they write newspaper articles like these, bloggers will become unemployed :)

Here it goes:

Azad’s ‘TV pill’ gives city health experts heartburn
Express News Service; First Published: 13 Jul 2009 10:45:38 AM

HYDERABAD: Even as Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad explained that his ‘family planning’ comments were in lighter vein, his Population Day speech is being seen as insensitive by many. The Minister’s remarks were the talk of the day with several regional channels dissecting his speech in discussion programmes.

Ghulam Nabi Azad, while addressing a gathering on World Population Day, advocated TV as a ‘birth control pill’. Azad said that if every village had electricity, people would watch TV till late in the night and fall asleep. “They wouldn’t get a chance to produce babies,” he said.

His statement that the Naxal problem was also due to population explosion has been criticised by many. “The fight in the future and at present is between the haves and have-nots. The Naxalite movement is a result of this,” Azad said on Saturday.

As part of his speech, the Union Health Minister also advised that couples in the country should delay their marriage till the age of 30-31 so that population growth is curbed. Health experts beg to differ.

“At a time when rural India is suffering due to lack of power and basic infrastructure, it is gross insensitivity and lack of awareness on the part of the Minister to advise them to watch television in order to check population growth. This one statement mirrors the elitist attitude of the Minister,” said G Ramakrishna, who works in a Legal Process Outsourcing firm.

Azad’s dismissal of the Naxal movement as the product of an overpopulated nation has foxed many. “The Naxal movement in some States is a burning issue, which sprang out of social and economic inequities.

Azad did not make any sense when he referred to the population issue as the root cause for the differences between sections of the society,” said a Knowledge Manager in the Centre for Good Governance.

He also opined that it is politically incorrect to promise electrification to villages for the sake of watching TV, as a population control measure.

“Instead of disseminating population control awareness messages to rural areas of the country, it is unfortunate that Minister advises rural people to watch TV.

Statements like these reveal the lack of commitment of the Health Ministry to implement family planning and population control programmes in the country,” said Sarath Kumar Baral, who has worked on family welfare awareness programmes in a UNDP-funded programme.

Azad’s statement advocating late marriages for population control were not spared either. Health experts felt that delay in marriages was bad for women. Child-bearing after the age 30 would prove to be dangerous during the gestation period. “We need to strive against child marriages, there are no second thoughts about that. But delay in marriages is not advisable as stated by the Health Minister. Late marriages would result in lot of complications during pregnancy, which could sometimes be fatal,” informed Dr C V Ravi Kumar. He felt said that statements of this sort would send wrong signals to the younger generation and result in serious consequences.

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It is clear that the standard of our Union Ministers has come down drastically, while our journos are getting better. Or may be the population of unlearned politicians is increasing. I think we need some ‘selective population control’ now :) It should work in democracy.