How did the Emergency get mixed up with sterilization?

It is nobody's contention that the internal Emergency was declared on June 25, 1975 on account of India's population explosion or the country's slow progress in curbing the birth rate. And yet for millions of people, especially the poor masses, the main impact of the Emergency was forced sterilization. How did the Emergency get mixed up with sterilization?Indira Gandhi's 20-Point Programme did not say a word about family planning. But Sanjay Gandhi's Four-Point Programme not only had family planning as the first point but it became the only point which was ruthlessly implemented on a national scale. In Sanjay's vocabulary, family planning meant only one method - sterilization.His main strategy was to push up the Government's targets through his summary orders to the chief ministers of U.P., Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan, in particular. His only weapon in implementing the programme was the use of brutal force, unmatched even by medieval barbarity.Mrs Gandhi, who was fully aware of what was happening on the family planning front, pleaded ignorance and at times blamed the Opposition for highly exaggerated stories. It is difficult to surmise whether her passive behaviour was due to her love for Sanjay or the pressure from the World Bank, which is known for its unacknowledged policy of denying aid to countries that do not make a success of their family planning programmes. Thus, the innocent Indian masses, for the first time in the history of the country, were subjected to an outrageous body-snatching exercise marked by vulgarity, cruelty and brutality - all because Sanjay wanted to emerge as a national leader, by demonstrating his tremendous capability in implementing a national programme. As a testing ground, Sanjay chose the family planning programme launched by his grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, in 1951, and ineffectively implemented by his mother Mrs Gandhi.Camp Approach: In 1971-72 the Government experimented with "the camp approach," which relied implicitly on pressurization by district authorities, to intensify the sterilization campaign (mostly male sterilization) and covered as many as 210 districts.On the assumption that the camp approach was successful, the targets were drastically pushed up in the next year, leading to a dramatic fall in the achievement rate from 105 per cent in 1971-72 to 55 per cent in 1972-73. Nevertheless, in absolute terms, an all-time record was established in 1972-73, a record which was surpassed in the Emergency year 1976-77.The Government revised its policy in 1973-74 and abandoned the camp approach. As a result, the number of sterilizations slumped to only 942 thousand compared with 3,122 thousand in the previous year.Sanjay's family planning programme started gathering momentum around January 1976. The impact is visible even for 1975-76: the number of sterilizations shot up to 2,669 thousand, compared with 1,354 thousand in the previous year. The number doubled in one year. The figure reached an all-time high in 1976-77, namely, 81 lakh, that is to say, the number trebled in just one year.Sanjay Effect: Assuming 1974-75 as a normal year for family planning, and also assuming the target set for 1975-76 as normal (as this was set before the Emergency), and slightly increasing the achievement rate to 68 per cent, there would have been 1,694 thousand sterilizations in 1975-76. From this we estimate that 975 thousand sterilizations may be attributed to Sanjay Effect in 1975-76.We next assume that in the absence of Sanjay Effect the target for 1976-77 would normally have been 3,000 thousand; assuming an achievement rate of 70 per cent, there would have been 2,100 thousand sterilizations. Since the actual number was 8,107 thousand, 6,007 thousand may be attributed to Sanjay Effect in 1976-77.If our assumptions are correct, Sanjay Gandhi accounts for roughly 70 lakh forced sterilizations (including the cooked figures) Sanjay Effect is a combination of coercion, cruelty, corruption and cooked figures.Sanjay Effect has long-term implication; too. The first inevitable impact was a slump in family planning performance when normalcy was restored. In other words, the performance during the comparable period after the Emergency came down to one-fifth of the performance during the Emergency. This is not the Raj Narain Effect, because such a situation is a direct outcome of the restoration of normalcy and the elimination of the Emergency excesses.Loop method: Even during the Emergency, thanks to the Sanjay Effect, the non-sterilization methods of family planning did not fare well. For example, the achievement rate for the IUD (loop) method came down from 71.8 per cent in 1974-75 to 66.5 per cent in 1975-76 and 50.4 per cent in 1976-77.In fact, in the peak year of sterilizations (1976-77) there was an absolute decline in IUD cases, compared with the previous year. And in the case of conventional contraceptives (condoms) the achievement rate in 1976-77 was 74.9 per cent, compared with 83.5 per cent in the previous year. Thus, the forced sterilization programme was a setback to the over-all family planning programme even during the Emergency.This leads me to hypothesize that Sanjay's insistence on sterilization at the cost of other family planning methods was aimed at striking terror in the minds of masses. It is significant that in Delhi he mobilized the officials and employees of Delhi Administration, Delhi and New Delhi Municipal Corporations and the Delhi Development Authority in forced sterilization work, but the officials of the Central Government were by and large spared.The worst sufferers of this massive body-snatching exercise were the Harijans (mostly municipal sweepers), peons and clerical staff, school teachers and, most of all, innocent rural people in large tracts of northern and western India.Sanjay Methods: To give a few examples of the cruelty and brutality of Sanjay methods we may mention the forcible sterilization of bachelors, young married men and women, persons with no children, old persons, hospital patients, (also charging extra money from outdoor patients who could not produce sterilization certificate), inmates of jails and night-shelters, and pavement dwellers; catching hold of passers-by, passengers in buses and persons returning home after late night cinema shows; stopping the salaries of school teachers and administrative staff members; transfers as punishment (for non-procurement of sterilization cases); non renewal of all manner of licences; rejection of applications of non-sterilized persons for loans, fertilizers, water and electric connection; cutting off water and electricity supplies; forcible collection of money from shopkeepers by the so-called youth leaders on the pretext of organizing sterilization camps; threat of arrest under MISA; and, finally, lathi charge and police firing and death of scores of persons.Sanjay Multiplier: Though we have estimated that about 70 lakh persons were victims of Sanjay Effect during the Emergency, the spread effect (through communication and rumours) must have been substantial: the direct impact of this zulum must have been on at least seven crore people (assuming five adult relatives and five adult friends of the victims) and another seven crore must have come under its indirect impact. Thus, Sanjay Gandhi must have alienated a potential of 14.7 crore voters in the general election of March 1977. Indeed, a signal contribution to Indian democracy!Published By: AtMigration Published On: Nov 7, 2014 08:21 IST--- ENDS ---

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How did the Emergency get mixed up with sterilization?

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