One Child Nation & Population control in India

 Law for population control to come soon in India

Different people have different opinions about population control, when to start a family, how many children a family can/should have, its financial implications, impacts on emotions or level of happiness, and so many such micro components that come along with the birth of a baby. In the long run, decisions each family makes have enormous impact on macro components like earth, its resources, climate, biodiversity, economy of a country, happiness index, hunger index, poverty, crime and what not. 

I think most people's attention would go to China's one child policy and the debate will start around it. I saw a documentary named 'One Child Nation' on prime video. 

Was the idea of one child policy right?

Was the decision correct and the timing of it's implementation?

Were the policies or ways adopted by the Chinese government right?

What else they could've done? 

What would the future of China look like if that didn't happen ?

You can add more questions to this list.

It would be better to answer these questions, form an opinion when we get to know what happened, how and why it happened. There are two major sides of this. 

1. Some people think it was morally wrong. Mostly people who suffered and some people from the administration. First of all a woman has right to decide about pregnancy, giving birth and number of children. They are the one's at the receiving end. There were several problems: unwanted/accidental pregnancy, forced/deliberate abortions, sending/throwing newborns away (2nd baby), forced sterilization etc. If you think at the individual level and considering you are independent in every possible sense then you will find it wrong. But we are not like the older times, examples of which people keep giving. We are bound by nations we live in, government that rule us, Constitution/rules/laws that are there. We will live with harmony as long as we are under this umbrella of nation. Imagine situation when law and order is not there or not being followed. We have ample of such instances. Back to China, many infants were killed, thrown away in plastic bags but some were saved by a few volunteers who actually sold them to people who were looking to adopt children, mostly Americans. Now what do you think of these volunteers who made money by saving lives? Government put them in jail. What they did, was it morally wrong? These children grew up with different people while their families were alive. At least they got a life because of these volunteers. Most of them did found about this truth and met their families. They blame chinese government for this. Infants who choked to death and their families left in disguise like they never had these children. People suffered.

2. Sometimes for greater good, leaders do some things which may not seem right at the moment. You can find many examples in history. People died, suffered. Some incidents had a positive impact, others did not. 

There's only one earth at least for us, for now that we know of. It has its capacity. There's a limit on how many people+species can sustain (not only to survive but to lead a healthy and good life) with/without human interference. Resources are limited. We are continuously exploiting them. Everyone is not getting a fair/equal share of these resources. So equality is a distant dream. China's fertility rate dropped from a little over 6 around the 70s to 1.7 now. Ideal fertility rate is 2.1 We can see why this policy was needed in China. If you check the list of highest fertility rate countries you will find African countries leading. You can study the impacts on  various dimensions due to higher fertility rate. Let's talk about population density, China-153 per sq.km, India-382, USA-36, Europe-34. Despite one child policy, China's population density increased (it was below 60 in 1950). We can see the impact of this policy in China's growth. 

Consider an example of a product based industry. It works on supply and demand. It's foolish and illogical to keep producing when demand keeps decreasing. Industry will go in loss. Also the efforts, energy, resources, manpower, money etc that went for making these products is also lost with zero returns. Do you get my point here? 

I think it was necessary for China to take some kind of measures to control its population. Our civilization is based on cooperation. It was lacking in China, between the government and the people. The way the policy was carried out wasn't smooth. People weren't taken into confidence, it was forced implementation. Maybe because China is not a democracy but we are. Maybe our government will find a better way. Let's cooperate and hope for the best! 

PS: You can ponder over the agricultural laws that were taken back. Basically what it takes to bring a change and how it can go wrong.