Since 1979 the Chinese government has exerted control over who could be born and who couldn't. The country had a system of quotas for child birth which from the outside resembled a controlled assembly line. Couples could have only one child and women lost their reproductive rights. All that is set to change, or maybe not. China was compelled to end its one-child policy as the percentage of elderly citizens started rising with not enough young people to support them. There was a time when China's policy was lauded in India which is home to 1.27 billion people. It was democracy that prevented India from going the China way. The question that stares Chinese leaders in the face is, will a policy switch change everything for the better? Not everyone believes so. The one-child norm is now deeply embedded in the social structure and it's not like opening and closing a tap. Experts argue that the one-child policy helped cut the population growth by at least 400 million. Maybe, but those years were harrowing for many families. There were forced abortions and female infanticide was rampant. The gender imbalance in the country can be traced to the flawed one-child policy. The flaw in the two-child policy is that it is linked to the shrinking labour pool instead of flowing from the fountain of human rights. Nonetheless, it is akin to a new dawn for Chinese couples.
