Exclusive Family Planning

The BJP-led Assam government is planning to pass laws that will offer special incentives to government employees who limit the number of their children to two in an attempt to check population growth in the State. This is obviously because the 2011 census has revealed the alarming population growth in the districts of Dhubri, Morigaon, Goalpara, Darrang, gaon, Karimganj, Hailakandi, Barpeta, Bongaigaon, Cachar, Dhemaji, Kamrup (Metro), Karbi Anglong and Lakhimpur. This is the result of polygamy coupled with lack of family planning. But has it occurred to the government that confining the family planning incentives exclusively to government employees will do nothing to cope with the problem of abnormal population growth in the 14 aforesaid districts? There are only about one lakh families of government employees in the State, and not all of them are two-children families. The State government will probably discover that there would be just about 50,000 or 60,000 families that are two-children families. So the special incentives offered (like certain concessions, allowances and reimbursements and children’s education allowances) to keep families small would be confined to these 50,000 or 60,000 families. And since the government’s reach would be no further than families of government employees, this initiative would merely serve to strengthen the belief that the government exists for the government alone and not for the people. This would be yet another instance of the government concentrating solely on the small sector of government employees to the exclusion of the rest of the State.