Editorial 1: Nation and its people
Context:
- In May last year, it was reported that the fifth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) had shown that the total fertility rate (TFR) — an average of the number of children that would be born to any woman in her lifetime — had declined to 2.0 in 2019-21.
Introduction
- From institutions like the Population Council to the World Bank, from the erstwhile Planning Commission to politicians of all hues, from western aid agencies to religious bigots, everyone was convinced that if only successive governments had stepped in to arrest population growth, India would have been better off.
- During the Emergency years, an attempt was even made to force compulsory sterilisation.
- When China declared its One Child policy, many among the Indian elite campaigned in favour of such a policy at home. While the government of the day rejected the “one-child” policy, it launched “Do Ya Teen Bas” followed by “Hum Do, Hamarey Do” campaigns.
Fall in Total Fertility Rate
- The change in the population discourse began when both fertility and birth rates began to fall in the socially-advanced states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
- Research related the decline with literacy, education and health status of women, among other factors. If the rest of India can mimic Kerala, it was argued, then India’s population problem will become manageable. Indeed, that has begun to happen.
- In May last year, it was reported that the fifth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) had shown that the total fertility rate (TFR) — an average of the number of children that would be born to any woman in her lifetime — had declined to 2.0 in 2019-21.
- This was marginally below what is called the “replacement level fertility rate” — of 2.1 — that is, the level at which a given population exactly replaces itself from one generation to the next, and so results in zero net growth of population.
Pattern of population growth and its consequences
- The pattern of population growth has had many consequences for economic policy, including for trade policy, internal and external migration, political demographics, demand for public services, the use of natural resources and inter-regional variations in growth.
- Almost all these challenges were addressed within the wider framework of population growth being a bane rather than a boon.
- India’s multilateral, plurilateral and bilateral trade agreements have been demanding access to overseas jobs, employment visas and so on, in the relentless pursuit of overseas employment opportunities.
- India remains a strong advocate of out-migration, even as the present political dispensation opposes in-migration.
- So, where does the celebratory response to India’s new status as the world’s most populous come from? Clearly from the feeling that in a world of declining population growth, especially among the developed economies, Indians would spread out and remain the diaspora over whom the sun would never set.
Milton Friedman on Public investment in India
- Nehru had invited Friedman to study the Indian approach to planning and offer his views. Friedman was not in favour of public investment in manufacturing, but strongly advocated public investment in education.
- Friedman’s key observation, based on his study of American economic history, was that “in any economy, the major source of productive power is not machinery, equipment, buildings and other physical capital; it is the productive capacity of the human beings who compose the society.
- Hence, Friedman wrote to Nehru, invest in human capital. Convert people from being liabilities into assets. An ill-educated, ill-equipped, socially and culturally backward people are an economic liability. Educated, healthy, productive and capable people are a national asset. Indeed, an asset to humanity.
Conclusion
- What we are left with is a skewed educational system that on the one extreme produces pupils for the global market and, on the other, puts out poorly educated, linguistically limited, bigoted and chauvinistic youth who have to be retrained to be employed.
- Into the vacuum created by inadequate public investment in school education, the private sector is rushing in and now boldly demanding a change of policy that will allow for-profit educational institutions. A nation that cannot offer proper education to all will forever find population a bane rather than a boon.
Editorial 2: Maoist Reminder
Context:
- The Maoists have struck in Chhattisgarh after a lull of two years. Ten jawans of the District Reserve Guard, a special unit of Chhattisgarh police recruited locally, and their civilian driver were killed Wednesday when the extremists triggered a blast using an improvised explosive device in Dantewada district.
Introduction: Maoism
- Maoism is a form of communism developed by Mao Tse Tung. It is a doctrine to capture State power through a combination of armed insurgency, mass mobilization and strategic alliances.
- The Maoists also use propaganda and disinformation against State institutions as other components of their insurgency doctrine. Mao called this process, the ‘Protracted Peoples War’, where the emphasis is on ‘military line’ to capture power.
Maoism in India
- It originated as rebellion against local landlords who bashed a peasant over a land dispute. The rebellion was initiated in 1967, with an objective of rightful redistribution of the land to working peasants under the leadership of Kanu Sanyal and Jagan Santhal.
- It was started in West Bengal, the movement has spread across the Eastern India; in less developed areas of states such as Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh.
Sigh of relief
- By all accounts, the Maoist movement in India is shrinking. From being “the greatest internal security threat to our nation” — as the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described it in 2009 — the Maoist movement is now restricted to pockets, mainly in Chhattisgarh.
- As per Home Ministry records, Maoist violence has come down by 77 per cent since 2010, and deaths of security forces and civilians have declined by 90 per cent. The number of Naxal-affected districts has come down from more than 200 in the early 2000s to 90, with violence mostly reported from 25 districts.
- The Maoist movement is hardly a force now in states such as Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Odisha and Bihar, once its strongholds.
- However, the Maoists have taken advantage of the Southern Chhattisgarh geography, a forested terrain bordering Maharashtra, Odisha and Telangana with poor transport and communication facilities, to build a base
Changes in the recent years
- In recent years, security operations have turned the heat on the movement and impaired its ability to recruit and operate freely.
- With the emphasis on violence, the Maoist movement has also hollowed out as a political project and seems hardly in a position to expand its cadre base.
- At the same time, the state has not only expanded its security muscle but has also built both physical and social infrastructure in left-wing extremism-affected districts and worked on development projects.
Way Forward
- The combination of policing, rehabilitation packages and welfare succeeded in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and other states, where Maoism had peaked in the 1970s and 80s. Chhattisgarh has been a late entrant in anti-Maoist operations.
- It wasted precious time on civilian militias like Salwa Judum before course correcting to train its police force and expand the welfare outreach. This is the right path as evident from the sharp decline in Maoist attacks and killings. The task is to pursue with the strategy — without lowering the guard.