The Hindu : New Delhi News : Enforcing two-child norm: violations galore

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Oct 11, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Enforcing two-child norm: violations galore

By Gargi Parsai

NEW DELHI, OCT. 10. L.B. Singh of Kanpur broke down even before he could start. Thrice he tried to speak into the mike but choked on his voice. The members of the People's Tribunal on Coercive Population Policies and the Two-Child Norm comprising Shabana Azmi, Syeeda Hameed, Vasanthi Devi, Jashodhara Bagchi, Sandeep Dixit and Ruth Manorama, looked on in stunned silence.

"Sudha Singh was my daughter's daughter. She was pregnant. The doctor had told her that the foetus was not growing in her womb and she needed to abort but on the condition that she would get herself sterilised. The abortion was done by a junior doctor resulting in perforation of her intestine and other complications. We could not say anything against the doctors as she was under their care. After another operation and eight days the 27-year-old mother of two died.''

Shimla Devi of Azamgarh district in Uttar Pradesh too was lured into sterilisation on the ground that the Collector's man would take care of her. Nothing of the sort happened. When she complained of post-operative pain she was told that her internal stitches had "turned septic." In a choked voice she said she turned to her parents who borrowed money (Rs. 5,000) to save her life.

Painful procedure

At a sterilisation camp in Saharanpur, a bicycle pump with a nasal tube attached to it was used to pump air into the abdomen of women. Of the 11 centres surveyed by Healthwatch Group, at four they observed that patients were crying from pain while undergoing sterilisation. Such was the callousness that patients were operated upon even after the effect of anaesthesia wore off. In some cases, women were slapped into silence. There is no pre-operative counselling nor post-operative care and follow-up. There was no provision for compensation in case of failure, which is rather large.

According to Ramakant Rai of Healthwatch, three District Magistrates in Uttar Pradesh admitted that they were sanctioning gun licenses after getting "sterlisation cases" since the target was to get at least five sterilisations in a district.

Tip of the iceberg

These and other narratives from Haryana, Jharkhand, Orissa, Rajasthan were only the tip of the iceberg of what the coercive population methods and the two-child population policy adopted by several States were doing to women on the ground. The States which have legislated for the two-child norm in panchayats include Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Maharashtra and Himachal Pradesh. "Green Cards" have been introduced in these States which make sterilisation conditional to avail ration facilities or access to Indira Awas Yojna or denial of education to the third child.

Nirmala Buch, former Union Secretary, found out in a study of these States that as many as 4,000 men and women from Rajasthan, M.P., Chattisgarh and Haryana had been disqualified from various panchayat positions on "violation" of the two-child norm. Of these 50 per cent were below the income of Rs 20,000 per annum and 80 per cent belonged to SCs/STs, OBC categories. Only 20 per cent were from upper castes. "There is sure politics in bringing in this norm which defeats the very purpose of the 73rd Constitutional Amendment giving reservations to women and dalits in panchayats."

The norm led to desertion of wives, higher abortion rate with associated risks, giving away children in adoption and re-marriages by elected panchayat members. It also led to sex selective foeticides and abortions.

Shabana Azmi, former Member of Parliament and Goodwill Ambassador of the UNFPA, said there was lack of political will to implement the National Population Policy and to restrain States from violating it. She said at no point of time such a tribunal was more necessary than now given the magnitude of violations women faced at the hands of service providers and government. "Women need to break the culture of silence," she said.

The organisers — Human Rights Law Network, Healthwatch, SAMA, the Hunger Project and Jan Swasthya Abhiyan — felt that the Central Government had joined many of these State Governments by sanctioning "a sharply targeted population control programme" in 209 high fertility districts as stated in the Common Minimum Programme which went against the National Population Policy and the target-free, spirit of the International Conference on Population and Development to which India was a signatory.

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Enforcing two-child norm: violations galore