Mumbai (AsiaNews) - With a current population of 1.2 billion people and 75 thousand newborns per day, India is preparing to become the most populous country in the world. According to the forecasts of the United Nations, by 2030, the South Asian giant will overtake China - whose birth rate is declining because of the one-child policy - touching 1.45 billion people. This figure, Pascoal Carvalho, a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life points out to AsiaNews, which "reflects the existence, even today, of cultural values that encourage family and community survival."
According to the Catholic doctor, the demographic picture presented by the UN "matters to the pace and process of economic growth and development in India". It is then interesting to note, he points out, that this baby boom "is not caused by an increase in births, but rather by the sharply reduced rates of infant and child mortality".
Despite the positive aspects arising from the current demographic profile, family planning policies for birth control are in place throughout the country. Among these, says Carvalho, "even sterilizations [often forced, ed], that take us back to the black days experienced by the country in the 1970s." At the time, the government of Indira Gandhi promoted an aggressive and targeted sterilization program, which provided economic incentives for those who participated, but also mandatory vasectomies for men with two or more children.
"However - he recalls - because of widespread corruption and abuses, however, many other men were tricked or forced to get the operation, and many women, too, were compelled to undergo much more dangerous sterilization procedures. In the course of one year, rough estimates state that eight million sterilisations were recorded: 6.2 million vasectomies and 2.05 million tubectomies, Dalits being particular targets.
Recently, one of the dispatches of Wikileaks revealed that in those years the government clamped down on Catholic organizations and the clergy, who tried to oppose the mandatory sterilization program.
