UP Population Bill – A Fascist Attack on Democratic Rights Based on Lies and Falsehoods
Amit
In the aftermath of the Corona pandemic and the utter failure and apathy of the Yogi government in handling the pandemic, the situation of unemployment in Uttar Pradesh becoming alarming, and unable to face the real issue of the unprecedented inflation, the Yogi government is using all kinds of hideous designs that the fascists always resort to. From attempts at caste and communal polarization, provocative speeches, repression through the state machinery, especially, the police administration, every fascist trick in the trade is being employed by the Yogi government. In such a situation, these fascists have relied upon attempts to divert attention from the real issues that affect the masses by creating communal polarization by raising slogans against ‘love jihad’, conducting fake encounters and illegitimate arrests to instill the fear of terrorism among Hindu masses and manufacturing communal riots, as state legislative elections approaches. This only reveals the total failure of the Yogi government to deal with the real issues of unemployment, inflation, poverty, health and housing.
Recently, the Yogi government of Uttar Pradesh has introduced the draft of Uttar Pradesh Population (Control, Stabilization and Welfare) Bill – 2021. The State Law Commission, Uttar Pradesh had invited suggestions from people after making it public in July. This bill is a fascist attack on the democratic rights of the people. According to this bill, the Yogi government has proposed a provision that parents having more than two children will be banned from contesting elections, taking advantage of government facilities, applying for government jobs and getting promotions etc. Not only this, many other anti-people provisions like including only four persons of a family for a ration card have been included in this bill.
The Yogi Government in the population bill has claimed that there is a shortage of resources in the state and therefore there is a need to control and stabilize the population to promote equitable distribution and sustainable development. Obviously, the claim of stabilizing population and achieving equitable distribution and sustainable development is absolutely false. If we talk about the present situation, Uttar Pradesh is one of the leading states in the country in terms of production of food grains, despite backward farming methods dominating the eastern and central part of the state. Uttar Pradesh ranks first in the production of wheat and sugarcane and second in the production of rice. However, much of this agricultural produce is left to rot in the godowns of FCI every year. There is no dearth of natural resources in the state. A huge workforce is being wasted in, which, if given work, can transform the scenario of the state. Despite this, if there is poverty and unemployment, it is because of the present capitalist system which does not aim to fulfill social needs but to ensure profits for a handful of capitalists.
In fact, on the pretext of this alleged “scarcity”, the Yogi government is aiming for two birds with a single stone. On the one hand, the RSS is propagating fallacies that if the Muslims population is left unchecked, then Hindus will become a minority. The entire machinery of the RSS is misleading the masses to believe that by 2050 the population of Muslims in India will exceed the population of Hindus. Therefore, this law fits in smoothly with false propaganda of the RSS and ostensibly aims to keep the Muslims under control and to keep a bar on their population. On the other hand it is being told to the people that the real reason for the problems like poverty and unemployment in the state is that the population has become too large and unsustainable! Bare facts regarding the availability of natural resources and production relative to the population of the state, bust this myth, which appears as a common sense to majority of masses, as this Malthusian argument has been pushed by all capitalist governments in order to train the common masses to blame themselves for their hardships, instead of putting the entire capitalist system in the dock.
Presenting this bill, the Yogi Government has also said that through this bill the total fertility rate (TFR) in the state will be reduced to 2.1 percent. A TFR of 2.1 percent implies that the population has stabilized. But according to the World Bank 2018 data, India’s fertility rate has already come down to 2.2 percent and the rate of its decline in Uttar Pradesh is even higher than the average of the entire country. Similar statistics have been presented by many different surveys. A more in-depth investigation of these figures reveals the truth behind the Sangh Parivar’s false propaganda of increasing Muslim population. According to the National Family Health Survey data, in the ten years from 2005-06 to 2015-15, where the TFR of the Hindu population had decreased by 0.5 percent, it decreased by 0.8 percent in the Muslim population. However, the Sangh Parivar, following in the footsteps of their fascist forefathers like Hitler and Mussolini, continues to fuel this false fascist propaganda and uses the old fascist method of repeating lies ad infitum, till they “become truths”.
Another thing to note is that today the principal reason behind the increase in population all over the world is not the poor people procreating more frequently, but the decrease in the death rate. For example, in 1950-55 the average life expectancy around the world used to be about 46 years, which increased to 65 years in 2000-05. Population growth rate is less than zero in many countries. At the rate by which the population is increasing, by 2040 the population will reach about 7.6 billion. Thereafter it will decrease and by the end of the 21st century it might come down to 5 billion, all other things remaining constant.
The hired hacks of the capitalist system argue that the reason behind all the problems is the ever increasing population, so that it can absolve the real culprit, namely, the capitalist system itself! The argument made by Malthus in the Eighteenth Century is used ad libitum to claim that the increase in production is very small in relation to the increasing population. According to Malthus, the population grows in a geometric progression of 2, 4, 8, 16.. while the increase in resources takes place in the form of an arithmetic progression i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4…. In fact, this theory of Malthus was based on data manipulation and falsehood. To prove this theory, Malthus took the data of demographic increase of America and compared it with the increase in food production and other means of livelihood of France. It is worth noting that the reason for the increase in America’s population was not entirely natural but large-scale immigration. When the resources of France are compared with the population of France, it appears that the resources in proportion to the population were increasing at a much faster rate. But even today this bogus lie is used to cover up the failures of the capitalist system.
Malthus’s solution was that epidemics etc. should not be curbed, that the deaths of common people due to epidemics would help this system to run properly. In the era of present fascist rise, this argument not only upholds the idea of the massacre of the population in the name of race, religion, etc. but also leaves the common masses to die of hunger, disease and epidemics too. Fascist forces like the BJP and Sangh Parivar have been talking about implementing such laws of population control for a long time. This Malthusian lie has been established by the capitalist propaganda machinery, especially, the education system, among the masses through decades. This lie has always been beneficial to the ruling class as it allows it to put the blame for the socio-economic insecurity and uncertainty face by the masses, on the masses themselves and absolves the capitalist system, which is the real culprit. The revolutionary forces should convince the masses against this anti-people falsehood and lies and expose the fascist agenda of creating paranoia based on these falsehoods and divide the masses along the lines of caste and religion.
