NEW DELHI: The Centre has told the Supreme Court that India is on the verge of achieving a replacement level of fertility rate of 2.1 through various voluntary birth control measures and rejected suggestions to adopt the coercive China population control model, saying such methods cause demographic distortions.
The health & family welfare ministry’s submissions came in response to PIL petitioner Ashwini Upadhyay, who had pleaded that “to have go od health; social, economic and political justice; liberty of thoughts, expression and belief, faith and worship; and equality of status and oppor tunity, a population control law, based on the model of China, is urgently required”.
The ministry said, “India is unequivocally against coercion in family planning.” Taking a dig at the China model, it said, “In fact, international experience shows that any coercion to have a certain number of children is counter-productive and leads to demographic distortion.”
This is indeed the case, with China’s population graph showing an imbalance between younger, working-age people and older ones needing societal benefits, it said.