When welfare schemes punish women for their family size

On paper, the Delhi Lakshmi Yojana, launched with great fanfare recently, is expected to benefit 1.7 million marginalised women from low-income families in the national capital region. Women between 21 to 60 will receive Rs 2,500 a month provided they meet certain edibility criteria, including the number of children. If the woman has more than two children, she automatically becomes ineligible. The reason for imposing this exclusionary clause according to Rekha Gupta, the chief minister of the BJP-led Delhi government, was because 'women are not baby-producing machines'

But is it the woman's fault that she has more than two children? Why is it that women are always held responsible for controlling their family size when most women lack the agency, choice and bodily autonomy to decide how many children they want to have.

Yet, several government programmes to empower women include the number of children as one of main eligibility criteria. Whether the aim is economic empowerment through cash transfer schemes or political empowerment by way of reservations of seats, these policies benefitting only women with not more than two children end up violating their reproductive, human and political rights. One of the biggest examples of this disempowerment is the two-child norm set as eligibility condition to contest local panchayat elections and followed by many states even today as a way to 'control' population.  Women face negative consequences of implementation of the norm directly (as candidates) as well as indirectly (as spouse of those disqualified) in the form of desertion, forced abortions, neglect and death of female infant or female child being given up for adoption. 

One of the reasons for focussing on women for population stabilisation, whether directly or indirectly, is because they are soft targets. Despite India being a signatory to the programme of action of the International Conference on Population and Development (1994), and committed to providing a basket of contraceptive choices, national data shows that female sterilisation continues to overwhelmingly dominate family planning procedures in the country.

So, it is unsurprising that the national capital has shown a similar trend. In Delhi, over 97 per cent of the 14,543 sterilisation procedures carried out during 2024-25 were performed on women. Only 301 vasectomies took place in the same period, underlining the massive gender gap in sterilisation and unwillingness of men to take responsibility to limit their family size.

But when women want to plan their families, they have no access to contraception or are not able to use it for spacing or limiting birth, thus increasing their risk of becoming pregnant. This unmet need for family planning increased to 7.3 per cent in 2023-24 from 6.1 per cent in 2019-21 (NFHS-6).  While unmet need for spacing increased to 2.7 per cent in 2023-24 from 2.0 per cent in 2019-21, unmet need for limiting or for not wanting any more children increased to 4.6 per cent from 4.1 per cent for the same period (NFHS-6). 

Then, why should women, who find themselves burdened with an unwanted pregnancy, be punished?

A more serious and worrying fallout of this conditional benefit will be the increased desire for the male child. If families stand to benefit from having only two children, the prevailing gender inequalities coupled with deeply entrenched patriarchy and preference for sons is likely to sound the death knell for girls. More so if the first child is a daughter. How cash transfer schemes help to change perception and attitudes of parents towards girls is still not clear, according to a study on 15 such schemes by UNFPA.

Alarm bells have been ringing for some time now with the continuing trend of declining sex ratio at birth in Delhi. Statistics for 2024 showed a fourth straight year decline in 2024, with 920 females born per 1,000 males, down from 922 in 2023 and 929 in 2022, according to the annual report on births and deaths released by Delhi's Directorate of Economics and Statistics and the office of the Chief Registrar (Births & Deaths). Concerns have been raised by health experts linking the trend to illegal prenatal sex determination in Delhi-NCR.

This fear has been compounded by the unavailability of updated data for sex ratio at birth for Delhi in NFHS-6. This is among the several key indicators removed from NFHS-6 by the Union Health Ministry along with mortality rates and anaemia prevalence. 

Incidentally, Delhi has reported the country's lowest total fertility rate (TFR) at 1.2. children per woman, lower than even the national TFR of 1,9 (Sample Registration System Statistical Report 2024). Delhi has also recorded the steepest decline in general fertility rate (GFR), which measures births per 1,000 women aged 15-49.

So, the vital question remains- why link women empowerment programmes with the size of their family?

The writer is journalist writing on development and gender; Views presented are personal.