EAC-PM member Sanjeev Sanyal suggests ending population control policies amid falling fertility

New Delhi: India should abandon population control as an objective of state policy and realign its family planning framework with the country's changing demographic reality, said Sanjeev Sanyal, Member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM), suggesting the government rollback population control rules and incentives amid a sharp drop in the national fertility rate.

"We need to overcome our population control mindset and align our policy objectives with the new demographic reality," according to a working paper, titled 'The Ghost of Population Past', by Sanyal and co-authored by Aakanksha Arora, director, EAC-PM and Virat Singh, consultant, EAC-PM.

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"The historical experience of other countries shows that once fertility declines below a behavioural tipping point, and alters social norms, it is very difficult to reverse," the paper said, stressing that there's no need to suppress the total fertility rate (TFR) any further and risk falling into a low-fertility trap sooner.

The paper emphasised that the government must end sterilisation-linked incentive payments by rolling back all direct benefit transfer payments, including acceptor payments, wage-loss compensations, and enhanced incentives to acceptors and service providers, related to sterilisations. "Repeal motivational payments and incentive payments tied to terminal methods and the ASHA incentive related to limiting couples to two children," it said.

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"Discontinue all family-planning related awards, World Population Day celebrations and Vasectomy Fortnight observances that call for population control along with repealing the two-child norm disqualifications across all states," it said.

The paper also called for removing all fertility reduction, population control or 'stabilisation' language from national and state policy frameworks and outputs.

"We would like to point out that we are not against family planning for reasons of health, child spacing or personal preference," it said, adding that population control is no longer relevant as an objective of state policy.

According to the paper, the national total fertility rate (TFR) is currently at 1.9, well below replacement fertility. In the absence of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the TFR stands at 1.6.

"This is comparable to Northern Europe (1.5) and the United States (1.6)," the paper said.