The UK Government, it seems, is up to the old racist tricks that have occupied Western administrations since the dawn of eugenics. A report claims that UK aid money is being used to fund forcible sterilisation of Indian women.
Three things occur to me. The first is to ask whether Indian politicians learnt nothing from the Emergency, when coerced sterilisation was a major factor in bringing down Indira Gandhi’s first administration at the conclusion of the Emergency in 1977.
The second is the shocking sexism, if not misogyny, visited on young and mostly poor women. It doesn’t take medical training to see that during a vasectomy you don’t have to invade the body further than the scrotum; but to sterilise a woman involves breaching then stitching the abdominal wall, almost certainly leading to infection when conditions are unhygienic. This, again, fuelled the anger of the Emergency.
The third consideration concerns ethnicity. In the newscast embedded above, I didn’t see any women in burqas, only saris. Whereas during the Emergency Rukhsana Sultana (right) demanded 300 sterilisation certificates from a group of Muslims who petitioned her to stop their houses being demolished, I wonder if the then-minority Muslim position that they should take the chance to outbreed Hindus, Sikhs and Christians will assume the status of a war-cry at the hands of Salafites and others of their ilk.
Globally, there is only one dependable contraceptive: rising standards of living. Matthew Connelly reports in Fatal Misconception that when Planned Parenthood went into Central America, they found birth-rates already decreasing because of increasing prosperity. Shrewd management of the riches India already has could easily better the lot of all her children.
But do you think population control only blights faraway lands? Look at the Mail’s sinister headlines today: "NHS…using terminations 'as another form of contraceptive’".
Gerry Dorrian
300 words
I think a reasonable, objective, and transparent eugenic program could help India immensely, from the lowest to the highest classes.
ReplyDeleteRight now in some provinces they trade guns and cash for sterilization which is a good start, for population control. And when lower classes have fewer children, each child they have they can better afford to care for. It's a moral imperative that India be open-minded for the good of future generations of children to live healthy lives, receive the attention and support they need to grow as a child, and even have the skills/talent/intelligence to be competitive in the world economy when faced with aggressive nations as China. Just as China has been in implementing such measures. But India should keep in mind that abuse of power cannot be tolerated, such innovative measures should not lead to disaster as they did in the western nations in the 20th century.