A Historical and Anthropological Comparative of the Family Planning Strategies of India and China *

Abstract

The article tracks the evolution of the family planning programmes in India and China and the conceptual linkages between the two. This comparison, in turn, serves as an entry point for studying the following:

The role that the family plays in becoming the site of governance and deploying state-led capitalism in the two countries.

The assumptions behind the development trajectories in both countries.

What are the ways in which the policies amplified patrilineal hierarchies within families to produce the disturbing outcome of the missing girl child—this even as the family planning policies became constrained as they were acting within a cultural milieu of patriarchy.

The article uses studies and commentaries across disciplines, such as, historical demography and anthropology to situate its arguments. The conclusion it attempts to put forth is that the small family norm was operationalised in various differing ways in both states, and yet the commonalities that arose were the following:

The declining sex ratio in both states as an immediate repercussion of the enforcement of the small family norm.

The structuring of the health services around the family planning operations.

The small family norm becoming an end in itself, as a mode of reaching a level of development akin to the West, and as an ethic for modernising nations.