Making welfare conditional is a stamp of coercion

Context: A simple reading of U.P.’s draft population control law is that it will grossly impinge on the right to reproductive freedom.

About Uttar Pradesh government’s ‘Population Policy.’

• Aim: To bring the gross fertility rate in the State down from the existing 2.7 to 2.1 by 2026.
• Released the Uttar Pradesh Population (Control, Stabilisation and Welfare) Bill, 2021:
  • Seeks to provide not only a series of incentives to families that adhere to a two-child norm but also intends on disentitling families that breach the norm from benefits and subsidies.
  • List of punishments: Such as being debarred from securing the benefit of any government-sponsored welfare scheme, disqualified from applying to any State government job, prohibition from contesting elections to local authorities and bodies and existing government employees who infringe the rule will be denied the benefit of promotion. 

Arguments in favour of UP’s Population Policy

• State’s ecological and economic resources are limited: Thus, unless population growth is regulated, the State will be unable to guarantee the provision of basic rights to all citizens.
• Impetus towards sustainable development: Which demands a balanced usage of resources.
• Judicial backing: Supreme Court judgment in Javed & Ors vs State of Haryana & Ors case, 2003 upheld a law that disqualified persons with more than two children from contesting in local body elections.
• International commitments: India was committed to its obligations under international law, including principles contained in the International Conference on Population and Development Programme of Action, 1994.

Arguments against UP’s Population Policy

• Violation of the right to reproductive freedom: As Supreme Court in Suchita Srivastava & Anr vs Chandigarh Administration case 2009, held that a woman’s freedom to make reproductive decisions is an integral facet of the right to personal liberty guaranteed by Article 21.
• Violation of the right to privacy: A person’s autonomy over her body is an extension of the right to privacy, which is a part of fundamental right under Article 21 as per K. S. Puttaswamy case judgment in 2017.
  • The law falls foul on the test of proportionality as there as the infringement on liberty is not minimum, there is an element of coercion, and there exist alternative less intrusive measures.
• Gender issue: An already skewed sex ratio may be compounded by families aborting a daughter in the hope of having a son with a view to conforming to the two-child norm.
• Social Discrimination: Instil an attitude of discrimination, with a burden imposed disparately on the most vulnerable groups in society.
  • Supreme Court in Devika Biswas vs Union of India case, 2016, pointed to how mass sterilisation camps invariably have a disparate impact on minorities and other vulnerable groups.
• Rooted in a culture of coercion: Experiences from across the world demonstrate that laws of this kind simply do not work.
  • Experiences from other states in India show that there are more efficacious available to control the growth of population, aimed at improving public health and access to education.