Without the rapid decrease in fertility, China’s economy would not have grown by 7-8% in a year (Potts). Thus, job opportunities would not be created for more people to be employed. With the decrease in population, competition among citizens was lowered and unemployment was alleviated (Potts). The Act prescribes 6 months to 2 years of imprisonment and a fine ranging from ₹20,000 to ₹50,000 for employers who hire children below 14 years for any form of employment. For employing adolescents aged 14 to 18 years in hazardous work, the punishment remains the same. Moreover, the Indian society is a patriarchal society and a society that has a preference for male children.
Legal & Privacy
The bill – which never even came to a vote – listed measures that the Indian government would take if they wanted to check the ever-growing population. If passed, the bill would make it mandatory for individuals to seek permission from officials if they want to have more than two children, permission that could be denied if sufficient cause was not met. In both India and China, these population policies had unintended consequences. Given Australia’s growing ties to India, it should be concerned about what population policy could mean for the erosion of democratic norms in India. However, the realization of this vision requires more than legislative action. It calls for the seamless integration of child welfare into budgeting, comprehensive monitoring systems to prevent re-victimization, and the utilization of technological tools to track and rehabilitate affected children.
- Children are not chattels; they are persons endowed with rights, deserving to be heard and cherished.
- In Githa Hariharan v. Reserve Bank of India (1999) 2 SCC 228, the Supreme Court cast a light on these archaic boundaries, suggesting that traditional paternal guardianship should yield to more balanced arrangements.
- Chandra suggested the Uttar Pradesh government should “segregate” the state into districts and focus on those districts where the fertility rate is high.
- As activists and experts scramble to educate the public on the need for contraception and family planning, these politicians want to limit each family to have just two children.
- Guided by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the global Sustainable Development Goals for 2030, UNICEF’s priorities align with and contribute to national social development goals.
While the Kenyan government formulates official strategies on familyplanning, promotion of the message and means of family planning falls mainly tolocal health-care offices and nongovernmental organizations. The average number of children perwoman has dropped to around four from around eight in the 1980s, whichconstitutes one of the fastest-ever national declines in family size.Contraceptive use has grown from seven percent in 1978 to over 30 percenttoday. AIDS, which affects one in ten Kenyan adults, is a significant factor inboth higher contraceptive use and the lower fertility rate. If we focus on the reduction of TFR in India after independence, major reduction has occurred between 1980 and 2011 Figure 1a; similarly, major improvement in female literacy also occurred between 1981 and 2001 Figure 1b. Therefore, it is the literacy (especially female literacy) that plays a significant role on population reduction. NFHS4/5 and SRS 2018 data show that states having high unmet needs of contraception have a high TFR and it is true for vice versa Table 1.
However, the number of Chinese women having children todayis still much greater than were having children in the previous generation, so China’s populationgrowth continues. In China, the government found that once fertility rates dropped, they were faced with an ageing population. Even after relaxing birth control policies to allow all couples to have two children in 2015, and three children in 2021, birth rates remain low, particularly among the urban middle class favoured by the government. In China, the government found that once fertility rates dropped, they were faced with an aging population. Even after relaxing birth control policies to allow all couples to have two children in 2015, and three children in 2021, birth rates remain low, particularly among the urban middle class favored by the government.
Unintended consequences
The Government has launched many welfare schemes like E-Baal Nidan, a special portal for Jammu & Kashmir, Baal Swaraj, Sahara, and the Out-of-School Children Trafficking Portal. The Government initiates efforts for child welfare, but their actions at the implementation level are very limited. To make crucial decisions about child labour, we need updated data, further research, and an assessment of the impact of child labour on child development. This article aims to analyze the National Child Labour Policy, its implications, and the legal framework, aiming to eradicate child labour. During a trip to the Mysore Palace, while exploring the palace from outside, a young boy approached, trying to sell roses.
Is pay parity a game-changer for Indian women cricketers?
We have a large percentage of the population in the reproductive age group. As the 2022 UN report itself notes, no drastic intervention from the state is required. As early as March 2022, reports circulated on Chinese social media that India’s population had already surpassed China’s, though this was later dispelled by experts. India will surpass China as the country with the world’s largest population in 2023, according to the United Nations World Population Prospects 2022 report. The special postage stamp valued at Rs 10 creatively represents a mother and a child to symbolize UNICEF’s mandate to protect and promote every child’s right to survive, thrive, and reach their full potential, especially the most vulnerable. A mandate that resulted in landmark progress in India led by the Government of India and supported by UNICEF.
Expeditious return of abducted children from India to their foreign homes finds no mechanical application as India does not follow a mirror order jurisprudence as a Non-Hague signatory country. The extra ordinary parens patriae constitutional jurisdiction of Indian Supreme Court and High Courts is invoked in the best interest and welfare of the removed child. In this quagmire, the child’s feelings, wishes, desires, apprehensions, fears and innate expressions are lost in the battle of warring parents fighting to establish, superior and preferential parental claims of establishing custody. The policy aims at bringing down the gross fertility rate among women to 2.1 by 2026 and to 1.9 by the year 2030. Ironically, if the provisions of the proposed two-child policy law were to be applied in Uttar Pradesh, half of the legislators belonging to the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would not be eligible to contest the assembly elections.
But the notion that India should emulate China’s past population policies is misguided at best, and dangerous at worst. The government should prioritize integrating ‘Child Budgeting’ into all budgets and programs across the Central and State Governments and their undertakings. Additionally, it must ensure that the allocated funds for children are utilized effectively while progressively increasing the budget to address their evolving needs. Over the past decades, recognizing the partnership and support of UNICEF in India, the Government of India released four commemorative postage stamps on the 25th and 40th anniversary of UNICEF in India and to commemorate 30 years of the Convention of the Rights of the Child, in 2019. Children are not chattels; they are persons endowed with rights, deserving to be heard and cherished.
Shared parenting, joint custody of both parents & rights of children to be cared by fathers & mothers, are unknown statutory concepts and thus find no meaningful recognition in Indian Family Courts. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, infant mortality dropped significantly. The “one-child policy”—limiting births per couple through coercive measures—was implemented in the early 1980s, and fertility dropped dramatically.
According to the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research created by the European Commission and Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency in 2015, India ranks number 4 in the world in carbon emission, with up to 2.5 million carbon dioxide (kt) emission in 2015 (see Fig. 2). China is an example of avoiding excess carbon emission with the population control policy. From the one-child policy, China avoided around 300 million births, meaning she has averted 1.3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2005 based on average world per capita emissions of 4.2 one child policy in india tonnes (Doyle). From controlling population growth, this can help suppress the increasing carbon emission in India. As a result, would help slow down the exacerbating global warming and the consequences that come with it.
While laws like the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act and its 2016 amendment have set critical benchmarks, the lack of updated data, limited awareness, and weak implementation continue to undermine their effectiveness. Despite the country’s economic and social progress, the implementation of the national programme highlights that eradicating child labour and addressing broader child rights issues remains a persistent challenge. Supreme Court & High Courts perform a salutary function in exercising their vibrant child protection parens patriae jurisdiction to do justice to children in fit cases, dehors technicalities of law. Sadly, the outmoded & antiquated Guardian & Wards Act, 1890, prescribing singular guardianship & custody rights, is an anti-thesis to the rights of the child to a unified Family Life.
- In China, the government found that once fertility rates dropped, they were faced with an aging population.
- We have a large percentage of the population in the reproductive age group.
- From controlling population growth, this can help suppress the increasing carbon emission in India.
- While laws like the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act and its 2016 amendment have set critical benchmarks, the lack of updated data, limited awareness, and weak implementation continue to undermine their effectiveness.
- Couples in rural areas, where 80 percent of the population lives, may have two or possibly more children but should delay getting married initially and then space their children.
UNICEF Home
Let us carry ourselves with compassion, vigilance, and humility as we shape laws and craft judgments that elevate the youngest among us. In so doing, we safeguard the promise of our nation’s future, ie handling one child at a time. “Similar laws in China further worsened the sex ratio, the same will happen in India,” she told Al Jazeera. “If the proposed bill was to come into effect it would completely overturn the policy, rendering it irrelevant and ineffective,” she said, adding that the concern and alarm around “population explosion” are not substantiated by data.
thoughts on “The Pros of a Child Limit in India”
In this undated poster, China advertises itsone-child policy as a means to a “rich life.” If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.