better future for India. "High fertility is both the consequence and the cause of destitution... Unfortunately the thrust towards equity and basic needs has been halting although the family planning programme is central to national development and human rights", they had asserted, However, if J R D Tata and others were really serious about their appeal, they ought to have raised the issue of serious shortfalls in putting the recommended package of services on the ground in 1988. They have not done so because they really did not mean what they had said in 1981, The forces which have made the rich and powerful richer and more powerful also have ensured that when threatened by the spectre of unbridled population growth among the poor and the weak, this group will use the raw coercive power of the state to force the poor to accept contraception. At first, it was motivational manipulation of people under the garb of extension education. There was also social marketing of family planning with massive use of media of mass communication. There were enticements in the form of cash incentives. There were dark hints of disincentives. Crowning all these was the unleashing of the cruel and ruthless bureaucratic machine to catch the poor and the weak people and get them sterilised. These people became the targets of their own government, a government which swears by democracy and respect for human dignity and human rights. The poor became the victims of a sinister numbers game among the bureaucrats. There were mass vasectomy camps of 1971-72. Then there was the infamous intensive family planning drive during the Emergency. The government of Maharashtra has carried this cynical game to the atrocious level of actually rewarding the best 'achievers' among the collectors and commissioners with 'rest and recreation
