TRANSCRIPT: Asoka Bandarage

Fred de Sam Lazaro, TPT: A point you make in your book about what seems to be ideological confusion in the post Cold War world on the whole issue of population. Talk a little bit more about that confusion.

Bandarage: Well, I think that there is an assumption among policymakers and even scholars that overpopulation, particularly the expansion of population in the so-called third world is the root cause of global crises particularly environmental destruction, poverty, and worsening security and political conflicts. That if only we can bring down the rate of population growth that many of these problems can be dealt with. And that there is a tremendous urgency in terms of bringing down fertility and population growth rates, particularly in the so-called third world countries. And there’s also the other side of the argument, which says that we have to start with socioeconomic development. That if the lives of the poor, particularly women, if their standards of living are improved then they would voluntarily want to bring down the size of their families. But those who are pushing for urgent population control say, "Well, we can’t really wait for that to happen — a socioeconomic transformation of these really backward areas. We need to really intervene with the latest of modern contraceptives and sterilization initiatives and so on and so forth." But particularly women’s activists working in the area of reproductive rights have been saying that there’s a fundamental difference between population control and birth control. Population control is when external forces try to intervene to bring down fertility rates. And birth control is when people, particularly women themselves, decide how many children they want to have, how they want to space them etc. And that we need to, one, focus on overall socioeconomic development and, two, on birth control. And that if we take care of these then in fact birth rates would come down. And also the population explosion is really a symptom of the problems. It’s not really the root cause of all these global crises.

FdSL: You’ve written that there’s sort of a free trade buy in from unlikely bedfellows, that there’s an orthodoxy emerging that has linked the extreme right in the United States or in the western world, the anti-immigrant forces, for example and the political liberals, the environmentalists. Talk a little bit about that.

Bandarage: Yes, I think on the population issue there is a difference of perspective within the environmental movement particularly liberal environmentalists in the northern industrialized countries and the environmental activists in the southern countries. In the west, particularly the United States, the large environmental organizations, the Sierra Club, World Wildlife Fund, so on and so forth have supported population stabilization over the years, again sort of believing that population pressure is one of the main causes of environmental destruction. Whereas environmentalists from the southern countries have emphasized the destructive aspects of over-consumption, the western lifestyle, militarism, so on and so forth. And, also, pointing out that some of the same environmental organizations in the western countries that support population stabilization are also calling for immigration control without looking at the underlying reasons for vast-scale immigration out of the poorer countries into the richer countries in terms of poverty, certainly the widening disparity between the north and the south, which are products of, in many ways, of accelerated globalization.

FdSL: Give us some sense of some of the root causes. The issue is the depletion of resources, the impact on resources, in a population sense. And stereotypically one sees crowds in a city in Bangladesh, for example. And we say we have a problem. All of those people are going to consume what’s left of this planet’s resources. That’s not true in your opinion, I take it?

Bandarage: Well I’m not denying that the population, the numbers don’t - that it has an impact on the use of resources. I mean certainly it does. And I think it’s mostly an accessibility factor. It is not really the root cause because I think there are enough resources in the planet for everyone. But it’s the question of how - one, how are the resources distributed? And secondly, what kind of lifestyle and consumption pattern is being pushed on everybody? So in a sense you can say that the greater problem, the real population exists in the northern industrialized countries, where an average citizen places more pressure on the environment than a citizen of Bangladesh - and I have figures on this in my book - because of the lifestyle or the differences in consumption patterns. But again even in Bangladesh or Sri Lanka, where I come from, certainly the richer classes place more pressure on the environment. So I think we have to look at that as well as the distribution aspect. And also the media and the kind of consumer — um -consumerist lifestyle that is really being proposed for everyone. If that is pursued, this notion that every family must have their car and refrigerator and so on and so forth. Yes, there is not enough resources for everybody if everyone is aspiring to the American lifestyle.

FdSL: China is, very outwardly anyway, aspiring to it. And everything one sees certainly in the eastern part of China, the East Coast would indicate an aspiration of life along western lines. Is that, in your opinion, something to watch for it’s potential to have huge impact on the resources?

Bandarage: Yes, I think so. China as well as India because there is a growing middle class that aspires to or is pursuing the same standard of living as the west. But this is at the same time that economic inequality is widening in these countries while more and more people are also falling below the official poverty line. So that some of the sort of same issues that are playing out on a global scale are being played out within our national units. So I think what we have to really talk about is more of a middle level of consumption for all. Because it’s not simply saying that everyone should bring down their levels of consumption because there are maybe 2 billion people in the world who live on less than $2 a day. And their consumption needs to increase with all those children who don’t have access to basic needs, healthcare, education, food, clean water, so on and so forth. But at the same time the minority that has excess of everything they need I think really need to bring their consumption down. So that they start — I think when talk about more equal distribution I think that is what we are talking about now, the kind of middle path.

FdSL: Talk about the economic inequality as it applies to the population context.

Bandarage: Well, in places like Kerela, the state of Kerela in India and in Sri Lanka birth rates and population growth rates came down voluntarily without sort of coercive policies on the part of the state government in Kerela or in Sri Lanka. Because average standards of living were improved because there was a welfare state that provided access to education, health care, a certain amount of subsidized food and even subsidized transportation, so on and so forth, and also very importantly that these provisions were available universally in the sense that they were also available to women. So women’s standards of living improved, their education, their literacy, so on and so forth. So it — there was less pressure for families to have large, for parents to have large families. So you see the sort of lessening of the inequality, of the sharing of resources with the poor led to birth rates and population growth rates coming down voluntarily, which is very different from say the Bangladesh model as advocated by the World Bank, which says we can’t wait ‘til socioeconomic development takes place. We have to really intervene through very stringent population control programs.

FdSL: And is it your opinion that we can wait for these processes of equalization or the policies to actually take effect?

Bandarage: Yeah, it’s not so much as absolute equality but you are making sort of basic needs, satisfying the basic needs of the poor. And I’m also not arguing against the importance of family planning and especially from a woman’s rights perspective. I think it’s very important to have access to voluntary birth control. But they have to be backed with access to health care. In many places where contraceptives, particularly experimental modern contraceptives like say Deproprovera and Norplant are promoted, the users don’t have access to basic health care. And often times economic incentives are used particularly in the promotion of sterilization. So that raises a lot of question, ethical questions. So I think that family planning is important and that it can be an aspect of socioeconomic development. But that should be in conjunction with economic benefits and also family planning and birth control methods introduced are safe and voluntary.

FdSL: Does it ultimately boil down to the reasons why people have children? Give us some insight to an audience that doesn’t usually think or relate to the psychology, to the mindset, to the environment of a poor woman in a country like Bangladesh or India or Sri Lanka. Why do poor women have many children? What’s the answer to that question?

Bandarage: Yeah, I think it’s a complex question because we have to look at the agricultural past of many of these societies where children were assets, economic assets. They are the producers, so in agricultural societies, I think there was pressure on women to bear many children. And even today in many agricultural societies that pressure exists. And even outside of rural settings, even in slum settings in the cities, children start working at a very early age. So a child in Bangladesh, at the age of — a poor child at age 6 or 7 may be providing support for the family. Whereas in a middle-class or upper-class setting within Bangladesh or certainly outside in the western industrialized countries children wouldn’t be, children would be economic liabilities rather than economic assets. So I think there is that economic argument, the rationality of having large numbers of children, particularly where infant mortality rates are high. And parents know that even if they have a large number of children not all of them are going to survive into adult age. And also it’s — having an additional child doesn’t costs as much in the poor setting as much as a more middle-class setting. If you look at the United States and consider how much it costs to send a child to college as opposed to what it costs to keep a child alive at very low consumption levels in a place like Bangladesh. But beyond just economic issues, I think people love children. And many of non-western societies and even western societies in the past were much more centered around children and family and community. They were not so individualistic and atomized. So, I think that there is a very different appreciation of life and people.

FdSL: So in a sense you’re saying in a country, or in a society, a typical South Asian one for example, which has not seen much progress from an agrarian environment for the average woman, coerced or forced sterilization is a real violation absent any other alternative to her. It’s essentially depriving her of assets by asking her to curtail her family. Is that sort of the message that some of these family planning programs have been sending these women historically?

Bandarage: Yeah, I think that is a problem, though I wouldn’t deny there may be some women who want to undergo sterilization. And they should have access to that. But they should also be fully informed. One, that it is a permanent method and that there can be side effects. And also as I mentioned before it shouldn’t be in exchange for say $24, which has — or for some meager amount of money, which is a lot in the case of a poor woman or a poor family. And there have also been cases of sterilization regret where women have undergone sterilization and later regrets it because the one or two children she had died. And she is no longer able to bear children. And also the fact that most of the sterilizations are female sterilizations. So there is a lot pressure on women, although female sterilization is a much more risky procedure than say male sterilization, a vasectomy.

FdSL: And you’re saying in some cases these women weren’t aware of the permanence of that procedure?

Bandarage: Yes, yes.

FdSL: In addition to being disappointed?

Bandarage: Yes, there have been cases of that. I don’t say that’s true in every case, but there have been cases of that.

FdSL: I want to switch gears just a little bit and talk about this process finally of globalization. You’ve talked about globalization and its outcome. Talk a bit about its consequences and rippling effects in the poorest parts of the world, the distant parts of the developing world. What has the consequence been for these societies in, certainly, the population context?

Bandarage: Yeah, again there’s a difficulty of talking about population as a whole because we need to look at the differential impact on different categories of people. And one could say that certain groups have benefited from globalization, those who have access to English language and other important resources to compete in the globalized economy. But for those who don’t have those access and resources it has been a loss of traditional means of livelihood and modernization in the new context. So much so that a large number of people have become a kind of a surplus population because transnational capital expansion has not necessarily produced a lot of new employment opportunities. So that people have been thrown off traditional jobs and are not reabsorbed into meaningful sectors of production. So you have a burgeoning skin trade where people who have nothing else to sell have to sell themselves, their bodies, or their children, their bodily organs, or go to emigrate to engage in very menial services and also prostitution - mainly for women as well as children. And one could even argue that soldiering is one aspect of the skin trade. Because if you look at many countries including Sri Lanka — unfortunately that is one of the more lucrative forms of employment available to the poor, the youth. So, with globalization despite the promise of economic growth and prosperity for all, we see widening economic inequality and the creation of poverty and creation of a surplus population that gets pushed into carrying weapons and fighting each other. And I think in some of my other work I’m also looking at the sort of connections between the rise of ethno-nationalism and conflicts in the context of globalization.

FdSL: Fascinating. Let’s talk about the flip side of it who presumably the beneficiaries. I’d be interested to know whether you agree that they are and how far that benefit extends? But, from the subcontinent, which has an English speaking elite for example, there’s whole hosts of software engineers, for example who are emerging on the scene stateside there. This is a new infrastructure that’s being built etc., etc. Might one argue that offsetting some of this marginalization is this huge creation of new wealth in countries like India, to some extent China? Is that globalization’s dividend? And in the big scheme of things in your mind is that zero sum gain? Is that an overall plus, minus? How do you come down on that?

Bandarage: Well again, I would say that we need to have a balanced approach. Because it is not to say that all growth is negative and that all innovation is detrimental. It’s not to call for a sort of return to a gatherer/hunter past because there was poverty before the economic modernization. And a lot of people do want access to the benefits of modernization: electricity, running water, certain amount of transportation, so on and so forth. But it is the sort of imbalanced model of development that is a model that doesn’t sort of take into account ethical, environmental, social criteria in its sort of decision making and tries to deal with the problems sort of after the fact. But how do we sort of infuse these criteria into decision making so that we don’t have these kinds of enormous disparities? And also environmental destruction and social and cultural destruction, which is also a very important aspect when you consider sort of the kinds of conflicts and the social movements that are emerging. Which are not necessarily challenging economic globalization but sort of, that the challenge and the resistance get directed at each other, the ethnic other, so to speak.

FdSL: You’ve mentioned this whole problem of brain drain, if you can call it a problem I suppose. There was one Indian ambassador who once told an audience in this country that this was reverse foreign aid. And he was talking about the fact that over 100,000 doctors from India, a poor country, practice medicine over here; educated at India’s expense. Might one look at that as reverse foreign exchange?

Bandarage: Oh, definitely, definitely - because it’s a loss of human resources for the poorest countries. And then in turn they have to import consultants and foreign expertise. And although there is a lot of resistance to immigration within the northern industrialized countries, they’re also benefiting from the influx of immigrant laborers, sometimes hard, extremely valuable labor. And also that immigrant populations are really enriching the host countries. Although multiculturalism, for example, is really criticized on many fronts, how it has enriched the English language and the western culture itself are often overlooked at the expense of other cultures. Because as more and more people are compelled to learn English and function in English they are also neglecting their original languages. And I think this is not peculiar to the so-called third world. I mean even in places like France you find a real resistance to Americanization and influx of a lot of English language words into the French language and trying to sort of maintain the integrity of the French language. Which — and in the case of South Asia and other countries - many languages and cultural traditions are really being weakened and very rapidly so.

FdSL: I could go on and on but I have to respect your time constraints. Do you have anything to add that we might not have touched on before?

Bandarage: Well, I would just like to say that it is an exciting time to live in despite all these crises because of global discussions of this nature and of course in a much larger scale. Globalization is being questioned both in the south and in the north. And so much so that even institutions like the World Bank are appropriating some of the language of their critics: reproductive rights, democratization, so on and so forth. So there is a kind of dialog about democracy, human rights, environmental sustainability, and certainly women’s rights that didn’t exist before.