Grossly Flawed Logic

Badruddin Ajmal, chief of the All India United democratic Front (AIUDF) appears to be rather unhappy about the State Population Policy announced recently, mainly on one count. He objects to the State’s attempt to control the growth rate of its population through a limit on the size of a family by insisting that a married couple should have no more than two children. And since it is difficult for any government to enforce such a policy, what it has done like Chi and quite a few other countries is to introduce disincentives to people with more than two children in the matter of government jobs, promotions and the right to contest panchyat and municipal elections. However, some drastic measure like this was very essential to the control of population growth in Assam which has been of the order of one crore in just about ten years, largely through large-scale illegal migration from Bangladesh. Badruddin Ajmal contends that the birth-rate with more than two children is found mostly among Muslims and Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) people. [This is not entirely correct. Assamese Muslim families have few children.] He argues that the State’s intended population policy will affect a large number of Muslims, SC/ST people and the poor, depriving them from exercising their fundamental right. He is obviously talking only about their fundamental right to have as many children as they want! He is not talking about their fundamental right to be educated enough to realize that they are really ruining their own lives and the future of the State by having more children than they can support and more children than are good for any overpopulated State. It stands to reason that if these three categories are poor there is all the more reason that they should not aggravate their poverty by having more mouths to feed.

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