Like most memoirs, this one too ranks high on the readability scale. As India’s leading demographer, who headed for several years the Population Research Centre of the Institute of Economic Growth, Ashish Bose had the privilege of knowing from close quarters the academia, top bureaucrats and many politicians over a span of several decades. The book is an outcome of that rich and varied experience.
Those looking for a fresh insight into population issues from Bose, though, will be disappointed. The author makes it obvious at the very start of the book that readers should not construe the 28 short chapters as an autobiography. Instead, they should treat them as “random pieces” of writing on several episodes in his life. However, for an academic who spent his entire life on population issues, it is difficult to stay away completely from that subject.
Thus, several chapters in the book dwell on Bose’s interaction with civil servants, ministers and politicians on various aspects of framing policies on population and family planning as well as their implementation. It is clear from these accounts that Bose had a tumultuous relationship with bureaucrats. While the civil servants would strive hard to please their political masters by setting targets for family planning, Bose consistently debunked the idea of setting physical or financial targets in this area.
Population control, in his view, has always been a highly sensitive social and cultural issue. Mere steps for birth control or sterilisation of a set number of families will not help achieve the desired goals, Bose always argued in all forums. Civil servants did not like this approach, but Bose managed to convince the political leadership on many occasions only to see that bureaucrats later succeeded in sabotaging those ideas by creating some obstacles.
Bose’s indictment of the bureaucracy is serious. In his interaction with Rajiv Gandhi, when the latter was the prime minister, Bose argued that Kerala’s success in controlling population growth (the state had the lowest birth rate after Goa) was unique and that model could not be used to tackle the problems of the four demographically sick states, which accounted for 40 per cent of India’s population.
In the process, Bose coined an acronym, Bimaru, which has become the most enduring expression to describe a bunch of states that are demographically sick or laggards on socio-economic parameters. Bose argues that the government’s challenge is to frame appropriate policies to tackle the problems of Bimaru states, which constitute Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. Over the years, Bimaru has evolved as an acronym and experts use it not just to convey the states’ demographic sickness, but also to point to the disproportionately strong hold that they have on which party forms the government at the Centre.
Many of the anecdotes Bose recounts are gems, providing fresh insights into the lives and idiosyncrasies of our political leaders. The recounting of the Emergency years is highly informative. Nobody in the government, Bose recalls, had the courage to tell Indira Gandhi or Sanjay Gandhi that the policy on compulsory birth control methods, including sterilisation, had turned the people of this country against the Congress party.
More From This Section
Thus, Charanjit Chanana, a minister in the Indira Gandhi government, agreed with Bose’s views on population control methods backfiring for the Congress party, but he expressed his inability to raise the issue with either the prime minister or her son, Sanjay. P N Dhar, Indira Gandhi’s secretary, scoffed at the idea of her losing the elections. Bose recounts with unrestrained glee that soon after the results, he went to visit Dhar and reminded him of what he had forecast. He found Dhar preparing to pack up his bags with one of his visitors in the room being Pupul Jayakar, a close confidante of Indira Gandhi.
Bose’s assessment of Raj Narain, who stunned everybody by defeating Indira Gandhi in the Lok Sabha elections in March 1977, throws fresh light on the maverick socialist leader. Narain became the health and family welfare minister in the Morarji Desai government and launched the community health workers scheme, an idea that received wide endorsement from population experts and economists, including Bose. However, the bureaucracy was unimpressed with the scheme. Bose’s fascinating story of how a well-intentioned scheme failed to take off should serve as a lesson for all political leaders who are keen on making a dent on India’s population problem. Rajiv Gandhi too had promised a lot on population policy, but he failed to deliver as he became too preoccupied with other issues and the Bofors controversy, Bose argues.
For all this, readers will have to suffer small doses of frivolous incidents and self-praise by Bose when he recounts many of the incidents. For instance, Bose narrates how as the president of the Gwyer Hall Students’ Union, he invited Indira Gandhi to address the students there and managed to impress her with his speech. Later in 1983,when Indira Gandhi was prime minister, he smuggled her out of the rear door of the conference room so that she could meet the staff of the Institute of Economic Growth (Indira Gandhi’s only comment while agreeing to meet the staff was: Don’t tell the security!). And finally, Bose would supply Sardar jokes to his uncle Anil Chanda, who was a member of Jawaharlal Nehru’s Cabinet. Chanda needed those jokes as, apparently, Nehru was fond of them.
HEADCOUNT
MEMOIRS OF A DEMOGRAPHER
Ashish Bose
Penguin Books
214 + X pages; Rs 450