The storm over Nitish Kumar’s comments on population control may not die down with his apology. He had said the same things before in public meetings in rural Bihar but what made the difference was that he said it in the Assembly and provoked an outsized outrage that saw the Prime Minister also joining in to rebuke one of the country’s most senior politicians,
The way in which the statement was made regarding educated women knowing what to do about avoiding contraception, and with gestures too, made it seem a lot worse, hence drawing opprobrium as being misogynistic, patriarchal, chauvinistic and all too demeaning of women.
Had the same been spoken in a biology class it may not have drawn the attention it did. Even so, it was remiss of a veteran leader to have allowed a stag party kind of humour to spill into legislative premises.
It is a subject worthy of being taken up in India’s non-existent sex education lectures for secondary school students because population control in a nation teeming with 144 crore people in the most crowded country will always be relevant in a world that is otherwise seeing a declining trend in population, including in China.
Nitish Kumar’s profuse apology may have been an admission to his wrong choice of platform to speak disparagingly of women who are not educated enough to know the burden of more children in the modern era.
What the CM said was in relation to the most crowded (people per square mile) state of Bihar of around 13 crore people, at least a third of whom are mired in abject poverty and another third barely get by above the poverty line in a largely rural state that has few jobs to offer in industry and services.
While Bihar’s problem is to do with its population, despite a high proportion of youth migrating for work, the rest of India, particularly the south, sees the Centre’s funds going to Bihar as disproportionately high because the basic distribution is based on population figures.
Let it be said that Nitish Kumar faces a lot more than the crowding and it is not only around population control recommendations that the state’s future will revolve. It is a pity then that he spoke as he did, in the wrong place at the wrong time.
