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Journalism of Courage
For the last five months, the media has been reporting extensively on the critical water situation prevailing in many parts of India, more specifically in Saurashtra, Kutch and north Gujarat.
Its causes, effects, solutions, impediments and alternatives have all been delved into at great length with evaluations made by experts, politicians, officials, columnists and the like, both in India and abroad. But what really baffles me is why has no one pinned the problem down to a simple truth unsustainable population growth. Why does everyone keep silent on this crucial factor?
This question becomes all the more relevant after India8217;s population touched one billion in mid-May this year.
It takes me back to 1967, when something interesting occurred in Gujarat. I introduced a Bill in the Gujarat assembly and it was called the Legislative Bill No 22 of 1967 To contain the birth rate of human beings in the state of Gujarat8217;. It came up for voting on March 21, 1968. Although it was a private member8217;s Bill no political party had supported it at that time I did secure seven votes. The Bill envisaged compulsory sterilisation of every person who already had three children. The main purpose of this Bill was to create a shock psychosis.
My commitments to family planning were so strong that even after my party, the ruling Congress party had collapsed at the polls to a large extent because of the family planning programme it had espoused I did not give up the crusade.
A news item of the Indian Express of March 28, 1977, says it all: Mr Digvijay Sinh is of the view that compulsory sterilisation alone would solve the population problem of the country.
He told newsmen at Wankaner last evening that the people would veer round to his viewpoint in the years to come.
Questioned whether he still favoured compulsory sterilisation despite the rout of the Congress in the north in the Lok Sabha polls, he said that he had started his campaign for compulsory sterilisation in 1968, and conceded that one of the factors which had led to the Congress defeat was sterilisation. However, he was hopeful that the people would accept the scheme in the next ten years.
Mr Digvijaysinh was the first to introduce a Bill for compulsory sterilisation in the Vidhan Sabha. Last year, he met ministers in the Maharashtra State as well as the Centre to muster support to his view.8221;To me, this endeavour symbolised initiatives that needed to be taken for the whole of India or, better still, for every developing country in the world with a high density of population and a growth rate of more than 1 per cent annually. Today, when the population is exactly double that which existed on March 21, 1968, I wonder what the scenario in Gujarat would have been today had this Private Member8217;s Bill been enacted.
I know that demographers are going to say. They will argue that even if birth rates fall drastically, it will be a long time before the nation achieves zero growth levels. But without going into the dialectics of demography, let us consider in what an advantageous position we would have been today if we had half as many people? What a unique opportunity was lost!Further opportunities were lost when I was denied nomination by my own political party, both to the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, over the last few years. Im the process, I was denied an opportunity to campaign for the cause. Persons committed to specialised nation-building activities unfortunately have no place in the political milieu of developing countries.
I am a firm believer in the law of nemesis and the suffering that we are undergoing is our own creation. The more we suffer the more we will realise our follies8230;
The writer is a former MP and Union minister for environment
