Population imbalance among religions can cause anarchy, says UP CM Yogi Adityanath
“Differences in growth rates of different religious groups (religious demographic imbalance) may cause chaos and anarchy in the country,” Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath added.
Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath said it was important to ensure that efforts to control population do not result in ‘’population imbalance” between religions because this could cause ‘’ chaos’’ and ‘’anarchy’’.
“When we talk about family planning/population stabilisation, we have to keep in mind that the population control programme must go ahead successfully, but at the same time, a situation of population imbalance should not be allowed to happen,” he said at the commencement of a programme marking the launch of the population stabilisation fortnight in Lucknow.
“Differences in growth rates of different religious groups (religious demographic imbalance) may cause chaos and anarchy in the country,” he added. “It should not happen that the percentage of population growth of any one class is more while we work on population control with awareness on the mool nivasi (native residents). People should be made conscious to control the population through efforts of stabilization.”
Under the population stabilisation fortnight, focus will be to make couples aware and facilitate them with family planning methods. For those who have one child, focus will be to make them aware about spacing methods between children, said health officials.
“Chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s statement has multiple meaning. I want to know what exactly the chief minister means by saying the demography should not be disturbed. Does he (CM) means that wherever population of a particular community is more in a particular area no more childbirth will be allowed and where ever the population of a community is less, he would allow more childbirth,” said Anupam Mishra, national secretary of Team RLD, a wing of Rastriya Lok Dal.
All religions, classes, and sectors should be added equally to the efforts of population stabilisation, the chief minister said.
As pointed out in a data journalism piece in HT previously, Muslims do have higher fertility rates, but they are a minority when it comes to total families with more than two children
While some of this can be explained by their relative socio-economic backwardness, an HT analysis using NFHS data had found that Muslims have a higher share of married women with more than two children than Hindus, even in same education and wealth cohorts. But 83% of families with more than two children are Hindus.
The piece added that Muslims are not an outlier when it comes to the trend of falling Total Fertility Rate, although their TFR remains higher than that of Hindus.
“India has a population of 135-140 crore and Uttar Pradesh is the most populous state with over 24 crore people, which is going to cross the 25 crore mark soon,” the CM said.
Mentioning the achievements of Uttar Pradesh in the last five years, the chief minister said that maternal anaemia had come down from 51.1% to 45.9%. Full immunisation has gone up from 51.1% to over 70% in the last five years. The rate of institutional deliveries which was 67-68% earlier is now 84%, he added.