Betsy Hartman
ऑक्टोबर
12, 1999 has the dubious distinction of being both Columbus Day and ‘Day of 6
Billion,’ ostensibly the day world population will pass the six billion people
mark. A well-funded media campaign, organized by the United Nations Fund for
Population Activities (UNFPA), the Communications Consortium Media Center and
others is already revving up to spread demographic alarmism, despite the fact,
or perhaps because of it, that population growth rates are declining worldwide
faster than anticipated.
तर
many of the campaign’s messages include the need for women’s empowerment, the
main theme reaching the press is that population growth is a major drain on
social, economic and environmental resources. Left out of the picture are the
real culprits: capitalist exploitation of both people and nature, obscene income
and consumption disparities, inappropriate technologies and hyper-militarization.The
belief is you can have your cake and eat it too: you can support women’s rights,
while scapegoating their fertility for the planet’s ills. You can cross-dress
Malthus and parade him around as a feminist.
पाच
years after the 1994 UN population conference in Cairo, the population
establishment is experiencing a sort of ideological schizophrenia. On the one
hand are positive calls to make women’s empowerment and broader reproductive
health services the centerpiece of population policies and the rightful
condemnation of the use of coercion and demographic targeting in family planning
programs. In some countries there have been serious attempts to reform
population programs, and within institutions like the UNFPA, there are
progressive individuals struggling to change policy.
On
the other hand, many population and environment groups, especially in the US,
continue to blame poverty, environmental degradation, political violence and
even the spread of diseases like AIDS on rapid population growth in the Third
World. Zero Population Growth, for example, links ‘Y6B’ to ‘Y2K’, claiming that
world population passing the six billion mark is a more threatening problem than
the potential computer glitch. Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute has
taken an even more cynical approach, arguing that African countries which have
experienced rapid population growth are suffering from "demographic
fatigue", accounting for their inability to take adequate measures to halt
the spread of the AIDS epidemic.
या
messages actually undermine the Cairo reforms by reinforcing demographic
targeting and spreading fear and loathing of the faceless, nameless masses ‘over
there.’ Despite the Cairo reforms, population control programs remain in place
in many regions. Sterilization abuse of poor women is still common in a number
of countries, including Peru, Mexico, India and China. In many national and
international family planning programs, long-acting, provider-dependent
contraceptives like Norplant are targeted at poor women since these methods are
considered more effective in preventing pregnancy even if they present greater
risks to health and do nothing to block the transmission of sexually transmitted
diseases like HIV/AIDS. The main rationale for US foreign assistance in the
reproductive health field is still reducing population growth; according to the
Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, USAID continues to give less funding for
maternal services than it does for family planning.
का
is neo-Malthusianism so powerful in the US, much more powerful than it is, for
example, in European development and environment circles? There are a number of
different but related reasons. For one, we have a strong anti-abortion movement
which makes the population establishment seem reasonable by comparison — at
least it supports family planning, though often of the wrong kind. We also have
a well-funded population lobby that has influence at the highest echelons of
government. Money talks in Washington, DC.
In
addition, we happen to live in one of the most parochial countries on the
planet, where knowledge about development issues in the Third World is slim
indeed. Just look at the social studies and biology textbooks kids read in
school and you’ll find that population is typically blamed for poverty and
environmental degradation. This is very unlike curricular materials in the UK,
where competing theories on population are taught in a sophisticated and complex
way, and geography involves more than learning the location of the fifty states.
मग
there is the wilderness ethic, the belief in a pure nature, unsullied by human
beings. (Of course we created our wilderness through the genocide of its Native
American inhabitants.) There is little appreciation that human communities can
and do live in more sustainable relationships with their environments in other
countries. Poor peasants, we are taught, overmine the soil and cut down the rain
forests — there is little knowledge about how peasant agriculture actually
contributes to biodiversity and land conservation in many areas, or about the
business interests responsible for most forest destruction.
परंतु
the roots of the neo-Malthusian success go deeper than this. Neo-Malthusianism
is a useful ideological glue which binds liberals, and even some leftists, to
conservative causes. It is a tricky little belief system, constantly mutating to
fit the political moment. Just last year, right-wing anti-immigration activists
tried to change the Sierra Club’s neutral policy on immigration by arguing that
immigrants, by contributing to US population growth, were the main despoilers of
our environment. And just watch the debates over climate change. The spin
doctors are trying to divert attention from the US refusal to take serious
measures to cut carbon emissions by playing up the threat of China and India’s
populations as future energy consumers. Better the one child family over there
than a one car policy here, or raising taxes, god forbid, to finance public
transport and energy conservation.
परंतु
probably the single most important reason neo-Malthusianism is so powerful in
the US is because it resonates so well with domestic racism and sexism. Images
of overbreeding single women of color on welfare and bare-breasted, always
pregnant Third World woman are two sides of the same nasty coin. And both
groups, it is believed, are excellent candidates for social engineering. Insert
Norplant, tie their tubes, put them to work in fast food chains or sweat shops,
and give them a little micro-credit and education if you’re feeling generous…
And meanwhile call their young male counterparts barbarians, whether they live
in the US inner city or Robert Kaplan’s African anarchy. Lock the boys and men
तुरुंगात.
करू शकत नाही
get me wrong. I’m all for people having access to safe, voluntary, and
affordable birth control and abortion services as part of, not a substitute for,
comprehensive health services. Reproductive rights are a vital part of a human
rights agenda. I also support many of the reforms outlined at Cairo, though most
are yet to be realized. But I believe that once and for all support for
reproductive rights needs to be divorced from the neo-Malthusian agenda, which
not only distorts the delivery of family planning services, but wider social
धोरणे
वगळता
for the women’s movement, the American left has remained much too silent on this
issue. On Columbus Day in 1992 progressives here and in Latin America joined
together to say that 500 years of colonialism and imperialism were enough. This
year ‘Day of 6 Billion’ would be a good date to strip Malthus of all his trendy
trappings and put him back in his grave where he belongs.
-
बेट्सी हार्टमन या येथील लोकसंख्या आणि विकास कार्यक्रमाच्या संचालक आहेत
Hampshire College and a co-founder of the Committee on Women, Population and
the Environment.