Speech

18th Convocation Address, 1999

ADDRESS OF 18TH ANNUAL CONVOCATION BY

MARGARET CATLEY-CARLSON

IMMEDIATE PAST PRESIDENT, POPULATION COUNCIL, NEW YORK

April 9, 1999

Chairman, IRMA, Dr. Verghese Kurien, Chairman, NDDB, Dr. (Miss) Amrita Patel,

Members of I RMA Board of Governors,

Director, IRMA, Dr. Katar Singh,

Members of IRMA Faculty, Graduating Students,

Ladies and Gentlemen

Thank you very much for inviting me to share this day with you. It is indeed a celebration for me and for you. I am delighted to return to Anand for the third time; you are celebrating the great achievement of graduating from IRMA.

First, my sincere congratulations

- To the graduates who have worked very hard to achieve what they have today. Even by being selected for IRMA you have already shown that you have very exceptional qualifications. By staying the course, through fieldwork, classroom segments, academic study, you have persevered. You have done rigorous work on special projects, Management Traineeship Segment projects, theses, and consultancies. In short, your being here today is the proof that you were worthy of the confidence placed in you when you were accepted for study. The difficult part of applying this knowledge now begins. But for today, we celebrate.

Second, my congratulations to IRMA. The extraordinary contribution made by IRMA and by the family of institutions in Anand is a wonderful story indeed. Few institutions have made such a signal and enduring contribution to the development of their countries. This family of organizations has been created and maintained by gifted individuals who could see both needs and solutions, who have persevered as they innovated, and have brought into being major programs that have benefited large numbers of fellow human beings. I salute you.

I want to give you four messages today:

1. Your task is take on the crucial and enduring problems of rural poverty. But there has been a lot of success and there are many reasons to believe you will succeed.
2. The task that you are embarking on has global importance. What you do will do no less than determine the fate of the world. To take but one example, it will in particular have an enormous impact on population growth which in turn impacts on world economic, social and environmental health.
3. You have the tools - and you must be faithful to them.
4. The challenge you have taken on is particularly daunting because you cannot succeed unless others do so also. It will be in the advancement of others that you find success.

A global scan - the importance of your task.

Conditions in the developing world have improved more in the second half of the 20th century than in the previous 500 years. By the end of the 20th century, some three to four billion of world's people will have experienced substantial improvements in their standard of living; about four to five billion will have access to basic education and health care. This is an achievement of which we can be and should be very proud. There is much to do, but much has been done. The distance we have covered gives us confidence that we can do what remains to be done.

In just 30 years - and we must remember that this was a thirty year period when the population of the globe doubled - there has been a huge global effort toward development.

1. Literacy has risen by almost 50%. Even with enormous population increase, well over half of the population in India is literate.
2. The average woman now has just under three children; thirty years ago the average births per woman was six.
3. Infant mortality has been cut 50%; thirty years ago one in eight children died in the first year of life. India has been an innovator in this area and has seen the rate of infant mortality fall even faster than the global average.
4. Nearly five million fewer children die every year. In India 16% of people do not see their 40th birthday but 3 decades ago the figure was more than twice that amount.
5. Malnutrition has been cut more than 50%. Four in 10 persons suffered from malnutrition three decades ago.
6. The percentage of people with clean water tripled and access to sanitation doubled from a situation where three out of four persons did not have such access.
7. More than half of the world's people lived on less than a dollar a day thirty years ago - today that figure has dropped to one in 5 - but it is still the major problem we face globally - the persistence of poverty.

But the task is not done. There is no chance that your generation will not have a lot of serious problems to solve. The challenge ahead is to finish the tasks begun in the last 30 years - and to take on some new issues created by the style of development the world has adopted, - we have to deal once and for all with global poverty, and take on a number of key issues that could add significantly to the misery of the planet. Let's just construct a list of the top 10 problems for the next 30 years.

1. One in eight plant species is threatened with extinction in the next few decades.
2. More than 800 million people still face malnutrition.
3. One quarter of the developing world's people still live in poverty -- 1.3 billion with incomes of less than $1 per day.
4. Nearly 140 countries share 5% of the private foreign investment flows now estimated at $250 billion annually, whereas a mere 12 countries get 80%; clearly much remains to be done in creating positive investment climates.
5. More than 100 million children are still not in school.
6. Over 180 million children under the age of 14 work as child laborers.
7. About 70 % of the people living in poverty are women.
8. At least 5,000 new HIV infections occur DAILY around the world.
9. An area the size of a soccer field is being destroyed every SECOND.
10. Every month the world's population still increases by the equivalent of all of Canada's big cities combined.

These are precisely the issues and areas that you have been working on; these are precisely the challenges you are prepared to take on. Your work on deforestation, milk marketing, land rehabilitation, women's participation and cooperative development will enable you to develop models that will serve both your country and the many parts of the world still grappling with finding affordable solutions to these vital problems.

Rural development and population growth

Since the 1950s, India has recognized that population growth has been a primary factor constraining the ability of this country to educate, employ and provide for its citizenry. Early family planning programs were directed to changing reproductive behaviour. They had a certain and real success to date. We now appreciate that while the provision of services and primary health care are of great importance, it is the situation and status of women which is the primary factor determining fertility intentions and family size.

1. A revolution in reproductive behavior has swept the globe since the 1960s. Contraceptive use, once rare, is now widespread and the average number of births per woman has fallen by half -- from the traditional six or more, to just under three today. But there will still be significant growth - nowhere more than India which is poised to become the world's largest country. The pace of rural development will have a great impact on this growth.
• First, the average decline from six to three births per woman still leaves fertility about 50% above the two-child level needed to bring about population stabilization. With more than two surviving children per woman, every generation is larger than the preceding one, and as long as that is the case, population expansion continues. If families feel more secure about income and education, the number of desired children will continue to fall.
• Second, declines in mortality -- historically the main cause of population growth -- will almost certainly continue. Higher standards of living, better nutrition, expanded health services, and greater investments in public health measures have increased life expectancy by 50% since 1950 and a further rapid rise is likely. We want this to happen.
• The final and most important factor is what demographers call "population momentum." This refers to the tendency for a population to keep growing even if fertility could immediately be brought to the replacement level of 2.1 births per family with constant mortality and zero migration. The reason for this growth is a young population age structure, which includes the historically largest generation of women about to enter their childbearing years. These women will produce more than enough births to maintain population growth for decades even if they each have only two children. Further large increases in the population of the developing world are therefore virtually certain. Almost two thirds of India's future population growth to 2100 will be because of momentum. But it is in this area precisely where the pattern and pace of rural development can make a vital difference.
2. Only delaying marriage age and the age of first birth can attenuate the impact of momentum. Forty percent of the momentum effect could be averted with a delay in marriage of 5 years. In other words, about one quarter of future population growth in India could be averted if girls married later, and began childbearing later. This is good for those who have been marrying and bearing children too young. It would also be good for the country.

   The package of investment measures that makes an impact has to do with girls -- with supporting youth programs, especially those related to credit, gender, training, and vocational activities for young people. Some more special targeting for girls is needed. I want to charge you today, as you go forward to remember that so much of the fate of your country and our world will depend on how well girls and young women and integrated into the development effort. This does not happen unless change agents make it happen. Agricultural output, family income, family nutrition - and future population levels - depend significantly on the way we help girls to develop. You be the key.

3. Gender analysis and policies which are consciously gender sensitive must become much more pervasive. This is not a question of rights - although some may justifiably persue it for rights based reasons. It is good common sense. Women play integral roles in milk production, deforestation remedies, marketing and water usage. To the extent women are the agriculturists in any given area (and are yet restricted in either their access to market or credit or in rural property rights), they will be producing less food much less effectively than they might, and quite possibly also having more children than they wish to have. The impact of gender roles and restrictions in each of the areas one researches needs to be meticulously examined in order to draw out these lessons over and over again so that they become part of policy. Again you have the tools to make a key difference – not just to the lives of women, but to the global future.

The tools are in your hands

The essential point with population -- and it is one that is equally true in food security and in agriculture - - is that these issues need the applications of both science and technology, and behavioral change. The silver bullet -- the perfect contraceptive -- that was fondly imagined when I was at a university age is not and never has been the answer. The perfect drought resistant, nitrogen fixing, high yielding pesticide replacing seed is similarly not the answer - although it would surely help. And this is the lesson to learn and comprehend. It is precisely this blending that your IRMA work has equipped you to take on.

Succeeding through the success of others

As you go forward into your chosen fields, you must be faithful to the principles you have learned here at IRMA.

First, poverty cannot be solved, as long as we start with the idea that people can be delivered from poverty. They cannot. They can bring themselves from poverty with some assistance. Development is a transformational process, which ultimately depends on the individual. But we can help individuals develop the power to develop themselves.

Second, change needs to come from above and below. As those given the great tool of education, it is your responsibility to work from both of these directions.

Third, look not for solutions but for constraints. It is our task to try to ~ work around those constraints - to change institutions, to build capacity, to compensate for the powerlessness of poor people in all political system.

Let me close with two quotations: the first is from Mohammed Yunnus who says that

'every human being has enormous capacity, enormous potential. Many people never get a chance to discover what capacity they have and how far they can go. This is not the fault of the poor person - he or she has to exert great effort and develop skills merely to survive. The fault lies with the social arrangements that we have made, with the institutional designs we have introduced... "

Change from above is needed; but also change from below.

And the final word from Varghese Kurien to whom each person in this room owes much:

True development is the development of people, not of cows or milk routes or dairy plants... Liberalization and all the other trappings of India's new economic policy... can at best engender change from above…. Unless the rural poor have some control over the institutions that deal with their produce, economic growth will pass them by this time, just as before…. A new set of institutions will have to be set up, not institutions that treat the rural poor as objects of charity, but institutions that they can hold accountable and that are responsive to their needs. This is only possible when the instruments and institutions of development are placed in the hands of the poor.

This is your task. I know you are up to it. Congratulations to each of you.

References: This discussion was based on a large part on the following sources:

Bongaarts, John. 1994. "Population Policy Options in the Developing World," Science, 11 February 1994, Vol. 263, pp. 771-776.

Bongaarts, John and Judith Bruce. 1995. “The Causes of Unmet Need for Contraception and the Social Content of Services." Studies in Family Planning 26, no. 2: 57-75.

Bongaarts, John and Sajeda Amin. 1997. “Prospect for Fertility and Implications for Population Growth in South Asia," Research Division Working Paper # 94. New York: Population Council.

Brockerhoff, Martin and Ellen Brennan. "The Poverty of Cities in the Developing World," Policy Research Division Working Paper #96. New York: Population Council.

"Food: Enough for All." The Earth Times. September 1-15, 1998:2.

Human Development Report 1998, United Nations Development Program. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Human Development Report 1997, United Nations Development Program. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Krishna, Anirudh (Norman, Uphoff, Milton Esman), Reasons for Hope: Instructive Experiences in Rural Development, Kumarian Press, USA 1997.

Making a World of Difference – Celebrating 30 Years of Development Progress, United States Agency for International Development. Washington, DC: USAID 1998.

McNicoll, Geoffrey. 1997. "Population and Poverty: A Review and Restatement," Policy Research Division Working Paper # 105. New York: Population Council.

Population Growth and Our Caring Capacity. 1994. Population Council Issues Papers. New York: Population Council.

The Progress of Nations 1997, United Nations Children's Fund. New York: UNICEF, 1997.

The Unfinished Transition. 1994. Population Council Issues Papers. New York: Population Council.

Visaria, Pravin – various