In addition to the elimination of girl babies, either through outrightmurder or the denying them food and care traditionally given to boys, abortion, on the basis of amniocentesis, has been another means of population controlwhere girl babies are concerned. As in the case of infanticide, the authoritieshave been largely powerless to restrict the practice, abortion being for themost part legal in India even though the use of amniocentesis for the purpose ofaborting a healthy female baby is theoretically against the law. Another meansof reducing the 'unwanted' girl babies is abandonment to charitableorganizations under circumstances where adoption will result. The anonymousabandonment of children to charitable agencies is the another practice that isillegal but impossible for the government to prevent, for the agenciesunderstandably hesitate to refuse to accept a child from a parent apparentlyintent on abandonment for fear that infanticide will then be resorted to by sucha parent. And, although Indian law requires that an adoption agency givepriority to placement with families within India, the relative paucity of Indiancouples seeking to adopt children insures that virtually all babies given up foradoption will find homes in the affluent industrialized countries of the West. We have therefore seen that, while the rate of India's population growthhas been slowing, some of the measures adopted to this end are not of the best. To insure that comprehensive family planning programs find widespread acceptanceconsiderably more progress needs to be made in raising the standard of living ofthe Indian masses for 'although the wealthier, better-educated urban families docurtail their fertility, the poor have not had the means or motivation to doso.' 'Most important, perhaps,' writes John Cool, is the fact that thousands ofyears of Indian experience have shaped cultural values and social institutions, which encourage the survival of the family and the community through highfertility. Modernization is slowly changing this situation, but to insuresuccess considerably more progress needs to be made. BibliographyChandrasekhar, S. Abortion in a Crowded World: The problem of abortion withspecial reference to India (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974).Franda, Marcus F. (ed.).
Response to Population Growth in India: Changes inSocial, Political, and Economic Behavior (New Yew: Praeger, 1975)Bahnisikha. The Indian Population Problem: A Household economics Approach (NewDelhi: Sage Publications, 1990)Mandelbaum, David G. Human Fertility in India: Social Components and PolicyPerspectives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974).
Research paper and essay writing, free essay topics, sample works The Population Growth Rate In India
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The Population Growth Rate In India