Demographic Risks: Reproduction, Population Control, and the Techno-Medical Gaze in Contemporary India

• In Event: Technomedicine and Reproduction

Abstract

With each catastrophic climate related event, the conversation rightly turns to the dangers of climate change – for us all collectively in the global north and south. However, in some spaces, the dangers of climate change are often articulated as a problem of ‘over population’ and the pressures this places on the environment and societal structures. This focus on population, even within liberal quarters, is a slippery slope, as it creates the conditions under which the lives and bodies of poor brown (and black) peoples are surveilled under new techno-medical programmes. These bodies are rendered risky, again! In this presentation, drawing on field work in India, I show how global and local organizations, public discourse, and state policies coalesce around ‘population control’ measures under the guise of ‘family planning’ and women’s ‘empowerment;’ all the while working to prioritize neo-Malthusian population control agendas. While draconian ‘population control’ policies never ceased in India, there was a marked reduction in reproductive rights abuses in the past few decades. However, with new technologies and medical interventions combined with public discourse on the risks of ‘overpopulation,’ there has been a subtle acceptance of population control measures. Looking at the science of demography and its utilization by differently positioned groups, I posit that draconian reproductive politics have found new allies in some local and global environmental movements and are making a resurgence in contemporary India.

Author

• Nayantara Sheoran Appleton, Victoria University of Wellington