Why did National Leaders in India, China, and Peru Impose Coercive Family Planning Policies?

Abstract

We suggest that all three leaders believed that they had inherited a threatening demographic situation, brought about by prior administrative incompetence or by frank hostility to family planning by religious groups. The next step, to interpret the thinking of these leaders, is open to genuine debate. The ideology and power relations of the ruling elite are important: the caste system in India, demeaning of indigenous populations in Peru, and an obsession with planning in China have helped frame decisions about coercive family planning. The record seems to show that the three leaders began with a genuine desire to lift their citizens out of poverty and to have thought deeply about how to do achieve this goal. We will use public statements made at the time, together with observations about the intellectual frameworks in which these decisions were made, to learn from the history of coercive family planning.