By: Amar Yumnam
I learnt Economics from two institutions: the first in the Imphal College and the second from the University of Mumbai. On hindsight, I can always say that the teaching-learning process was very robust in the Imphal College at the time of the early 1970s while we were undergraduate students opting for Honours in Economics; for the Mumbai University Economics, it was one of the Best in Asia while we were students. The memories of the teachers in these two institutions and their key approaches in teaching the subject have always remained fresh in my mind.
During the last three days, an example of putting the cart before the horse such that there would be no progression and referred to by our teachers in the Imphal College while teaching us about Economic Policies has been recurring with unprecedented freshness. Two decisions announced by the provincial government of Manipur relating to population are the causal factors for this recall with laughter. One decision relates to the establishment of a Population Commission while the other relates to limiting the number of children to Four; while announcing these two decisions and particularly limiting the number of children per family, it was mentioned that it was being taken as a step forward in Population Policy.
While the limitation to Four has understandably aroused a social humour asking as to whether the number limitation applies to the parents, Husband or Wife, all the wives of a common husband taken together, etc., my interest is looking at the issue from the pragmatic angle considering the realities of Manipur.
Before I question the decision on the Adoption of Limit Theorem of Four, let me assert that the announcement of a Population Policy in 2022 itself is outdated at least by Four Decades. The idea of Population Policy as a means to control population inter alia got peaked by the mid-1980s, and by the beginning of the 1990s, the talk and discussion on it got completely transformed. By the mid-1980s, it was firmly established that Education is more important than family planning and human capital was more critical than physical capital. From the 1990s the world has been talking about and framing Knowledge Economy Policies in place of the Population Policies.
Now coming to the Adoption of Limit Theorem of Four, let us look at what the figures tell us. The National Family Health Survey 1 (NFHS 1) did not have much data on Manipur, but from the NFHS 2 we have been getting regular data. Let us look, to begin with, at the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) which tells us:”The average number of children a woman would have by the end of her child bearing years (15-49) if she bore children at the current age-specific fertility rates.” For any group of population, the Replacement Rate (such that the total size of the population does not decline continuously and ultimately disappear) should be 2.1. The various rounds of National Family Health Surveys give us TFRs of the three years preceding the year of the actual survey. The NFHS2 (1998-99) gave the TFR of Manipur as 3.04 as compared to the all-India average of 2.85. By the time of the NFHS3, it came down to 2.83 for Manipur and 2.68 for India. In the NFHS4 (2015-16), it became 2.61 for Manipur and 2.18 for India. In the latest round, NFHS5 (2019-21), it has become 2.17 for Manipur and 1.99 for India. These data reveal that the TFR of Manipur has been falling over the years, from 3.04 in 1998-99 to 2.17 in 2019-21; it is only 0.07 higher than the Replacement Rate of 2.1 and at the present trend would fall below the Replacement Rate within the next Ten Years.
In the light of this background, one wonders how the government reached at the Adoption of Limit Theorem of Four. Further, if the government wanted to make it applicable to families (in the sense of only one husband and one wife) having more than four children till about September 2022, it would be tremendously wrong for the prime principle of justice is that no policy in such cases can have retrospective validity. Still further, if we look at the Age-Specific Fertility Rates of the women aged 20-24, 25-29 and 30-34 today, there is no indication that the GFR of Manipur would pick up and attain FOUR anytime in the future ceteris paribus.
Instead of these bombastic announcements, the attention should have been given into more critical issues which necessarily demand attention of the government. The NFHS5 reveals many unpleasant facts for the five years preceding the survey. First, the percentage of women of the age group of 15 – 49 years who have experienced non-live birth stands at 25.4 for Manipur which is more than the double of the Indian average of 12.2 percent and higher than any other State or Union Territory in India. Second, the percentage of women of the same age group which had experienced non-live birth in the five years preceding the survey stands at 10.6 for Manipur as compared to 3.9 for India as a whole; no other State or Union Territory reach the double-digit figure like Manipur. Third, the percentage that ended in a non-live birth in Manipur is higher at 15.4 than any other State or Union Territory and about double the Indian average of 8.8. Fourth, the percentage of women of the child-bearing age receiving all recommended types of ante-natal care is still below 50 in Manipur.
Well, it is important that if any announcement is being made by the government, the facts should first be ascertained, analysed and firm up the foundation of the announcement. True, no government would go behind bars for making announcements founded on wrongful assumptions, but this does not by any means implies that the government should ignore facts and go on making announcements. If the government possesses facts which are different from what the public have got and have a context which the public do not have in their mind, it should be put out in the public domain; it is the collective engagement that matters in democracy.