Amidst the quixotic moral crusades the Maharashtra government has been waging against bar girls, another odious measure it had tried to push through went largely uncommented. Some days ago, the Vilasrao Deshmukh government introduced the Maharashtra Water Resources Regulatory Authority Bill, which de-barred farmers with more than two children from irrigation benefits. The proposal underwent modification after discussion in the assembly. Under the revised formula, farmers with larger families will have to pay up to one and a half times more than the going rate for irrigation water.The state’s irrigation minister, Ajit Pawar, justified the government’s move on two grounds. One, that it will help conserve water in a chronically water deficient state — as Pawar put it, “Over the decades, the capacity of our water resources has remained the same, even though the use of water has increased manifold. We need a stringent measure to check (this).” Two, it is a useful population control measure —says Pawar,”The two child norm has been been made mandatory in all local self government bodies and there is nothing wrong if the same yardstick was applied in water distribution.” Both arguments betray the self-serving mindset of the state’s ruling coalition.Take the first argument. Why, for instance, does Ajit Pawar not target big sugar cane farmers for causing widespread aridity in the state, since cane requires over four times as much water as most other crops? If he is so concerned about conserving water, why doesn’t he get these political fat cats to switch to more eco-sensitive produce? Surely he knows that sugar cane consumes more than 70 per cent of the state’s water resources earmarked for agriculture? Shouldn’t this prompt a serious rethink on cropping patterns?But Ajit Pawar will not “de-bar” sugar cane farmers from consuming excessive water, because he knows that his government’s power flows from those lakhs of hectares of sugar cane that dovetail neatly into the large sugar cooperatives behind which sit the most prominent politicians in his state. He opts, instead, for the politically expedient measure of zeroing in on farmers with large families. These are the very families who have not made the demographic transition to smaller units, largely because of illiteracy, poverty, caste barriers and political disempowerment. They are the ones which are, more likely than not, trying to support themselves on small holdings. They are also, more likely than not, critically dependent on an indifferent monsoon for survival. By attempting to deny this vulnerable group access to something as basic as irrigation benefits, or at least to control such access, these leaders are reneging on their constitutional duty to ensure justice, equality and dignity for all. Their deliberate espousal of a silver bullet solution indicates that they do not have the time, energy or inclination to address issues like health, child mortality, education and employment — which would translate into smaller families and declining numbers. The point made by a great number of demographers, social scientists, economists — Amartya Sen most famously — is that coercive methods of controlling the population do not translate into controlling numbers in a sustainable manner.This approach has, besides, serious demographic consequences such as skewed sex ratios. Maharashtra is one of the states that have registered fairly rapid declines in its sex ratio and politicians like Ajit Pawar will only ensure that the trend becomes more pronounced as the years pass.The consequences of the Chinese model of authoritarian population control is already patent. It is based on four basic approaches: the setting of targets and quotas; bribes and punishments; organisational control; and promotional propaganda. It is a model that can be extremely effective, China demographer John Aird points out, in a “politically inert, uneducated, impoverished population” with “an established pattern of bureaucratic authoritarianism”. The stories of “over-quota” mothers being forcibly subjected to late abortions, of women locked up until they agree to a sterilisation, of workers keeping a tab on the menstrual cycles of female colleagues, are a legion from the land of the Middle Kingdom.There is a new receptivity to such measures in India today. Several states have already gone far beyond just denying access to elected offices to those with more than two children. Couples are being denied ration cards and credit; the benefits of government housing schemes and subsidies, if they have larger families. The question we need to ask ourselves is whether we, in a democratic polity, wish to subject people to such undemocratic control? Especially when we have not yet ensured that the basic needs of a large number are met — China, at least, to give credit where it is due, has been far more successful in doing this.This way, we could end up punishing once again precisely those people who have already been punished several times by indifferent, corrupt, and ineffectual governance and a pernicious caste system.
