Law alone won’t help, says Nitish Kumar after UP floats population control bill

“It was found after a lot of research work that the rate of reproduction comes down effectively if women are educated,” Kumar said.

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar on Monday refrained from endorsing Uttar Pradesh’s new population policy whic aims to tackle the population problem. Kumar said that Bihar emphasises educating girls to bring down the rate of reproduction.

Law alone won’t help, says Nitish Kumar after UP floats population control bill

Talking to media persons after the customary Janata Darbar, which resumed after a gap of nearly five years, Kumar said, “Every state is free to do whatever it can do to check population growth. Laws alone can’t help check the population. It was found after a lot of research work that the rate of reproduction comes down effectively if women are educated. Bihar has experimented with it by promoting education among the girls and achieved success. If it continued, the state would have negative growth of population after 2040.”

On Sunday, the Uttar Pradesh government announced a new population policy for 2021-2030. The new policy has provisions to give incentives to those who help in population control. As per the draft bill, people with more than two children will not be eligible for a host of benefits, including government jobs, promotions, et cetera.

He said that Bihar’s experiment to check population by educating girls is a success with all individuals. “There are some exceptions. But the overall impact of girls’ education yielded good results in the state,” said Kumar, while making an apparent dig at former CM Lalu Prasad for having many children.

The CM once again batted for the total prohibition in the country, saying that the directive principles of the constitution suggested many provisions that needed to be implemented in due course. Kumar was responding to a query over the Delhi high court’s observation that the time has come to go for the uniform civil code.

Though the CM refrained from commenting on the court’s observation, he said that the government should care for other suggestions made under the directive principles.

“Uniform civil code pertains to Article 44 of the constitution, while Article 47 contained the provision for total prohibition,” said Kumar.

Around 200 petitions met the CM during the programme and apprised their grievances pertaining to different departments. The majority of complaints were related to health and education departments. The dilapidated state of hospitals and non-availability of doctors in rural areas, denial of benefits to students through the government’s credit card scheme, etc were raised during the programme. The CM gave directions to the concerned officers present during the programme to resolve them promptly.