According to reports, thousands of villagers in south-western China have rioted over the controversial family planning restrictions. The villagers in Guangxi province attacked government offices after family planning officials imposed heavy fines on families with large number of children.
China has been following ‘one couple-one child’ population policy launched in 1970s for controlling population growth. Urban families can have only one child whereas those living in villages can have two if the first child is a girl. The policy is also stated as ‘one is best, two at most but never third’.
The population policy being followed by China has helped China decrease its population growth. The Chinese government aims to keep the population below 1.37 billion by 2010. According to reports, China’s population would have been 400 million more than the present figures had the family planning policy not been implemented.
But a restriction on the size of the family has had its side-effects on China in form of distorted gender ratio. Like India, Chinese also prefer sons over daughters. As a result some 40 million men are frustrated bachelors.
Population has been a problem even for India with a population of 111 crore. Many people in India had been advocating forced small family policy and many still do. Failed attempts had been made to implement a legally binding small family policy. Though forcing families to restrict family size may decrease the population growth but will lead to distortions in the population-namely gender ratio. The gender ratio is still skewed in favour of males even when there is no restriction on number of children.
Though we risk leaving China behind in population size, an awareness based small family policy is more recommendable than one forced by law. After all laws can be by passed and if not, violated.
