NEW DELHI: How lacklustre the world would be without women and how boring, remarked Syeda Hameed, Member, Planning Commission, and the chief guest at a function organised here by the Population Foundation of India (PFI) on the eve of the World Population Day. Dr. Hameed was pointing to the rapid decline in the sex ratio of zero to six age-group girls in almost all parts of the country.

It is in keeping with this knowledge that India will observe `Equality' as is the United Nations' theme this year for the World Population Day on Monday. On the eve of the day, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said nothing could do more to benefit the world population than the worldwide protection for every individual's human rights — especially the rights of women.

At the PFI function here on the theme of `Gender Equality and Human Rights around Population and Health Issues,' Executive Director A.R. Nanda focussed on the need to have a rights-based and gender-sensitive approach to population stabilisation.

No need for incentives

"China's first 30 years of equitable and social approach laid the foundation for population stabilisation to accelerate. Even before they imposed the one-child norm, their fertility rate had come down to close to 2.1. In Kerala the fall in fertility rates has been sharper than in China. That is why we insist that there is no need for incentives or disincentives for population stabilisation,'' he said.

On the occasion a report on adolescent sex and reproductive health, `Quote-Unquote,' another one on National Consultation on Laws, Policies and Rights in the context of Reproductive Health and Population Stabilisation, and a film `Kinara,' on no-scalpel vasectomy were released.

Cautious optimism

Sounding a note of "cautious optimism,'' Ranjit Roy Choudhury, a member of the PFI Board, pointed out that population stabilisation was a question of access to health and of informed choices. Technological advances could not be translated into programmes unless there was public and private participation.

Downslide

Abhijit Das of Sahyog, Lucknow argued that the numerical-demographic debate was secondary to the issue of reproductive rights and gender equality because there was enough evidence to show that population growth rates were on the downslide and may not be possible to slow further through increasing couple protection rates alone.

However, it was the original rebel, one of the more vocal authors of India's first `Status of Women Report,' Vina Majumdar who told The Hindu that `population' and `gender' had jettisoned the real issues of people and the girl-child. "What is gender — gender policy and gender budgeting? Mahatma Gandhi did not talk about gender. He talked of women, for instance, in politics. We have to get back to thinking of women as women, not something abstract like gender which is coming from the West. I call this the politics of language. You cannot stir up emotions and images of women by talking of gender. Most people do not understand what gender is. ''

"By talking gender, you de-humanise the issue. Then nobody feels responsible and think this is not about me and us. In 1974, we had said in our report that declining juvenile sex ratio was indicative of marginalisation of women. But nobody took note of it then.''

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