Disincentives, incentives go together in approach to population, says Assam CM

It is unfortunate that the eviction of encroachers from government and forest lands is seen through the communal lens, says Himanta Biswa Sarma.

Since taking oath as Assam’s 15th Chief Minister on May 10, Himanta Biswa Sarma has waged a war against drugs. But he has grabbed more attention for his advice to Muslims to adopt “decent” family planning measures and for sanctioning a drive to evict encroachers from temple and government lands in which the minorities have mostly been affected. He speaks to The Hindu on these and other issues. Today, we have been able to manage our annual population growth to somewhere around 1.6% but further dissection of the last two censuses shows the Muslim population in Assam is growing consistently at almost 29% while Hindus are growing at just 10%. This means there will be a lot of poverty and illiteracy among Muslims. Somehow, we need to bring certain measures for slowing down population growth and for that we need to expand health and educational initiatives. You must look at our policy parameters when you talk of government schemes. First, we said there should be incentives like free education for girls, financial inclusion for minority women, reservation in panchayat and government jobs for women in general, and the establishment of women’s colleges and university in minority areas. But if you only focus on incentives without disincentives, any policy is bound to fail. To put it simply, if you are punishing someone for criminal activity, you must reward people for good deeds. In a society, you have to have an approach where both incentives and disincentives work together.