India and Sterilization

The nation of India is home to over 1.3 billion people, making it both the world's largest democracy and second-most populous country. Since 1951, the country has been using various forms of sterilization as a means of population control -- whether or not the actual people living in India agree with it.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.

(00:25):
My name is Matt. Our compatriot Noal is on an
adventure but will be returning soon. They called me Ben,
who are joined as always with our super producer Paul
Mission Control decads. Most importantly, you are you, You are here,
and that makes this the stuff they don't want you
to know. Today's episode, Folks, is going to hit on

(00:47):
a tremendously important and at times disturbing topic that may
not be suitable for all listeners. Uh. This does contain
descriptions of massive, massive crimes, and it comes in part
to us from fellow conspiracy realist Ashley, who was responding

(01:08):
to an earlier story in a strange news segment we
did where we explored Uttar Pradesh's controversial proposed bill to
incentivize what's known as population control. And Matt, this is
this is one of the stories that you brought to
bear um just maybe a week or so ago. Yeah,
it wasn't long ago at all, and it just happened

(01:28):
to be something that popped up in a news feed.
I didn't know anything about the context within India's history
of these kinds of practices that they are putting forward
incentivizing population control. But man Ashley wrote to us and
really started open our eyes to just what's been happening
there for decades. Yes. Yeah, and we'd like to read

(01:53):
Ashley's letter in full. So here's what she says. Hi, guys,
I was listening to your latest stream news and heard
you ask for more insight into population control within India.
I just graduated with a degree in international development and
social change, and I took a few classes during my
academic career surrounding the idea of overpopulation and population control.

(02:17):
India was heavily focused on this because they had a
history of both government forced sterilization and government coerced sterilization.
In the nineteen seventies, thousands of Indian men were rounded
up at gunpoint and given vasectomies, and it continues. Ashley says.
While that is thankfully no longer practiced, course of policies
like the one you discussed today are still nothing new

(02:39):
to India. Women are coerced into receiving tubal litigation sterilization
as through promises of land subsidies, livestock or rations. These
promises are not always delivered on Many women have spoken
on being left without receiving any of the incentives they
were promised. The government agents whose jobs are to recruit

(03:00):
volunteers that's in quotations for sterilization, aren't paid until they
meet a certain quota, so they become a victim of
the system as well. In less extreme cases, long term
birth control methods such as i u D s are
pushed on women and even if they complain of severe
side effects and requests to have them removed early, they

(03:21):
will often be refused removal. There have been many cases
of women having to remove their own i u d
s at home, which Ashley adds is quite dangerous and
painful and actually concludes with A great source you can
use is the documentary Something Like a War by deep
A Don Raj that's d H A n R a J.

(03:43):
It does show footage of tubal ligations, so it can
be a little graphic, but I honestly found watching the
women writhing in agony on jim Matts after the procedure
with no painkillers covered in flies to be more disturbing
than anything else, and that's where we'll leave the letter today.
This was important. First, who want to thank Ashley for

(04:03):
spreading awareness about this, and then we want to explore
this conspiracy and see what it means for the present
and the future of India's population as well as the
world's population. So we noted previously, there's an intense dilemma
faced by both India's government and its people. We're talking

(04:26):
about a part of the world where children often become
primary caretakers for their parents and grandparents. With that, how
can you convince someone to go against centuries of tradition
and in some cases what people consider a material necessity
for life and old age. Well, to understand that, we

(04:48):
have to understand a little more about India. Here are
the facts. As we've discussed before, India is awesome. I
don't I don't think he gets enough credit. I mean,
you know this, It's an ancient and it's got a huge,
huge population and a storied history. When we say ancient,
we're not fully around. This is one of my favorite facts.
The first person to clearly define the concept of zero yes, zero,

(05:12):
the idea of the number zero was a Hindu astronomer
and mathematician way back in six Other people other civilizations
had similar concepts, but this guy made it official. And
you could spend years reading the history of human civilization
on the Indian subcontinent and uh have the stuff they
don't want you to know. Guarantee that you will still

(05:34):
never get to all of it. So much stuff happened
in this part of the world. Big takeaway here is
that modern civilization as we understand it today owes a
ton to innovations from India. India. India is like the
o G of countries and civilizations. We we talked about

(05:55):
this before as well. But India is the world's largest democracy,
that's very important democracy, and it's the second most populous
country on the planet and has a population that is
more than one point three billion I believe. Then you
said one point three six six something effect. Yeah, that

(06:16):
so a lot of humans. Uh, And in just a
few years it's been you know, it's been projected that
it will become the world's number one most populous country,
eclipsing China. There with that that metric and you know,
in in several episodes prior to this We've talked about
how difficult it is to plan for that many people

(06:40):
to have all of the infrastructure, everything from just a
a steady source of food to other things that humans need.
When you're when you're talking about a government, especially a democracy,
that's trying to make decisions about a lot of that
stuff in various states within that much larger country, and
and doing that for a population and of let's say

(07:01):
a couple hundred million, three millions something like that, it's
already herculean task. Now multiply that by a couple of times,
and my goodness. Yeah, there's a couple more things I'll
hit right here before we jump into some of the
other stuff. In the country itself, the entire India, it's
it makes up two point four percent of the world's

(07:21):
total land area, but it supports get this, fourteen percent
of the human population. Yea, the whole shebang. Also only
four percent of the world's water resources, which is going
to become increasingly difficult. We're saying that there are, in
addition to just the organizational hurdles that country of this

(07:44):
size has to deal with, there are also these other
factors uh population density right there. Yes, population density is
a huge one. Also, poverty and food insecurity are daily concerns.
We're talking about a part of the world where an
estimated fifty million people live on less than the equivalent
of two dollars per day, where just under two hundred

(08:09):
million nine point four million people are under nourished. Forty
six million children in India, according to the studies, remains stunted,
and twenty five point five million are also additionally, are
defined as wasted. This is a different term. Wasted means

(08:29):
something very different in the US. I think it's safe
to say in this case, it's something much more serious.
It means that these children do not weigh enough for
their height. That's a problem. This is also where some
of the major controversy that we're going to discuss in
this episode comes in the concept that there are so

(08:52):
many people, many of them suffering to one degree or
another um and what do you do about that as
a country, as a government, as a democracy. Very similarly
to their their northern neighbors, China, their government has they
become pretty concerned with this for a long time as well.

(09:16):
They've we're gonna we're gonna outline everything that they've been
doing from a population control standpoint since the nineteen fifties.
I think that might be where we start here today.
But the government is just worried how the rising population
is going to impact these already existing problems. And it's
really these two things we've outlined here inequality between people

(09:38):
that exist in India, as well as a population that
is growing, perhaps exceeding the means of a government and
even private industry to be able to help everyone and
give everyone a quality of life that would be considered standard.
This is interesting because sometimes there is a false equivalency

(09:59):
of sorts. Uh. Not everybody agrees that inequality and overpopulation
are two sides of the same coin. Some people believe
that's a false assumption, but other people are convinced that
population growth itself inherently leads to crushing inequality. And to
this end, we'll go back briefly to that story from

(10:22):
our Strange News segment. Udar Pradesh proposed a controversial bill
that was meant to incentivize lower birth rates, giving people perks. Essentially,
they would say, if you keep the number of children
you have down to this threshold, then those children will
have preferential treatment or guarantees as they're growing up and

(10:46):
also have better chances to enter higher education to get
preference in in certain employment situations, and this would apply
to the parents as well. So it was a measure
that proposed carrots in place of sticks. But this is
just one of several examples. There was also the Population
Regulation Bill of twenty nineteen, which, in addition to incentives,

(11:10):
in addition to carrots, had sticks had disincentives. It was
aiming to punish parents who dared to have more than
two children. Without rehashing too much of this, it is
important to note currently this new bill in Udha Pradesh,
even if it passes, will not force birth control on people,
not physically at least, but it will spark an intense debate,

(11:34):
partially with the question that comes up whenever any government,
regardless of which country we're talking about, whenever any government
proposes a wide, sweeping law like this one that's supposed
to affect everybody, there's always one question, and it's a
good question. It's a question everybody should ask. Will this
really apply to everyone? Or will the wealthy and connected

(11:58):
be exempt as they almost always are. The other thing
we're going to be dealing with today is the fact
that this really the thought of being sterilized goes against
a lot of cultural norms that exist in India and
many other parts of the world, and a lot of

(12:18):
it goes into how people view the concept of a vasectomy.
At least from a lot of the sources I've been
reading there, there's some misconceptions about the side effects or
the after effects of that procedure. There are many viewpoints
there that the procedure will in some way feminize a

(12:40):
masculine person, or will cause any person who gets that
procedure to lose their virility, lose their ability to in
some ways be a man, ultimately to lessen masculinity, which
is not seen as a positive. Yeah. Yeah, the idea
being that the would be uh, this would affect maybe

(13:02):
someone's hormonal balance rather than just removing their ability to
reproduce successfully. And because of all the different beliefs out
there and the very valid distrust of government, you can
see why a lot of people would be against this
or at the very least highly highly skeptical. There's also

(13:24):
something else that you will encounter in this part of
the world, in India and in other parts of Asia.
It can be treated as a given that you your
job once you grow up is to care for your
parents or grandparents or older relatives in in old age

(13:45):
when they reach what we would consider retirement age. Uh
they may or you know, uh, maybe maybe your father
passes away and your mother is elderly. Well, then it's
natural that she goes to live with you. So will
hear this phrase sometimes along the lines of something like
children are your life insurance slash retirement plan. Of course,

(14:07):
this doesn't apply to every single family, but it is
pretty common. I found that an overwhelming majority of people,
around eighty percent of elderly widows and widowers that are
over the age of sixty five live with one of
their children in like a joint family joint household situation.

(14:28):
This practice is so common, in fact, that India made
it official in two thousand seven due to concerns about
poverty in the elderly community, and they pass something called
the Maintenance and Welfare Parents and Senior Citizens Act. This
law legally requires children and grandchildren, so long as they're
not miners, to maintain the health and wellness of an

(14:51):
aging family member. They define maintenance as giving them food,
a place to stay, medical care to the best of
their ability. D and they define senior citizen as anybody's
over the age of sixty and Uh. One thing you've
got to remember. Unlike in the United States where we
have Social Security, where it was just something everybody pays

(15:13):
into essentially for people as they get older into a
retirement age to be able to have money or to
at least function in many basic ways. Let's say that's
what social security would do. Uh, that does not exist
in India, at least in the way we understand it.
And this means that the family members are just going
to be doing it on their own and have been

(15:35):
just doing it on your own. Take what you have
and make sure you have enough or at least, you know,
do everything you can to have enough to support your
family members who are older as well. And if the
population control bill passes, you have to imagine what do
those people who are let's say in childbearing age or
people who are you know, ready to have children or

(15:58):
they could have children. What happens to them if they don't,
or what if they only have two children or one
child rather than you know, more than that to kind
of spread the weight of needing to take care of
the elders. And what if that kid moves. See, that's
one of the first things that I thought about is this,
this can put a certain segment of the population in

(16:22):
a precarious position. So you're saying, like, imagine you're those
people mat just describe your response could in a very
valid way be So you're saying that you're passing the
like you're passing the responsibility of caring for the elderly
from you know, this government that they've spent their lives

(16:43):
paying taxes to. And you're saying it's on me, it's
on my family, but it's like legally on me. But
then at the same time, you're saying, I cannot take
the steps to create the amount of children that I
would like to create. So what's what it's gonna happen
to me down the line? You know what I mean?
And that's yeah, yeah, yeah, where my family line. And

(17:08):
this leads us to the problem with overpopulation. That's that's
what I'm calling at least, And it may not be
the problem that you expect us to mention. What are
we talking about? Write the problems? Uh, we may not
have all the problems that that you might immediately think of,

(17:28):
or that the news wants you to think about. What
are we talking about? Will tell you, after a word
from our sponsor, the problem with quote unquote over population,
or as you said that the problems with quote unquote
over population. Well, first off, ideally, as long as someone

(17:53):
or some household can take care of the kids they have,
provide them with decent education, water, clothing, shelter, affection, then
they should be able to have as many kids as
they want, you know, and and create a bustling, successful family.
That's that's the dream for a lot of people. But

(18:14):
when we talk about the idea of overpopulation, the way
that we typically hear this depicted is something like, uh,
there are too many people living now. That makes the
human species ripe for a disaster. It exacerbates climate change,
which is already way off the rails. It uses up

(18:34):
resources in a way that makes them unsustainable, and that
it accelerates inequality. We've just named we've just ticked off
like the greatest hits of the overpopulation argument. But that
argument sometimes leaves leaves some important things out, like in
the in the world of academia, and you're gonna be

(18:55):
hard pressed to find a full agreement on the problem
of overpopulation. For some people over population in terms like
population explosion are just diversionary and they're used to distract
from the real problem, which is inequality. Because if you
look at if you look at the estimated amount of

(19:16):
money of value right throughout the world and then you say, well,
what about divide it all equally? First you'll be you'll
be called a crazed you know, communists through whichever is
in use today. But if you if you looked at
it and you just said, okay, treat it like a
math problem, what would everybody get if you sliced it

(19:37):
up seven point eight whatever billion ways. Well, there are
folks argue that you would find people's basic needs met.
The thing is, for many powerful people that would dramatically
reduce their own quality of life, so it becomes a nonstarter.
Plus back to your earlier point about organization, Matt, that's crazy.

(19:57):
How would you even do that? People are way too
corrupt to ever do that, you know what I mean.
We're talking about a species that will intentionally betray people,
even people that are their family or people they call
their friends, for like a pittance, like like a cassette tape.
I think I don't think I do for a cassette tape.

(20:21):
Though I'm not of the mind to do that. But
you know, that's a lot of people won't know which
way they go in that situation until they find themselves
in that situation and they feel like the incentive is
enough fuel to power their later rationalizations for the evil
stuff they do. Anyway, that's like they're saying that that

(20:42):
it's it's a real problem, but it's being used to
distract from another bigger problem, which is inequality. So reducing
the population is in that frame. Uh, that is a
way to address inequality, But does it mean it's the
only away theoretically no. So for other people, population control

(21:05):
through lowering the birth rate is absolutely legit. It's more
than legit. It's the only solution to a ticking time
bomb of economic, ecological, and social disaster. Yeah, let's think
about that for a minute. Imagine you are in charge
and you, for whatever reason, believe that there is a
population explosion problem where where in the area that you

(21:28):
control or at least have partial control. How do you
go about reducing that population actively? Do you kill off
a bunch of people? Probably not, no matter where you are,
even you know, the most heinous autocrat likely isn't going
to kill his or her own people in that way

(21:51):
because it could lead to disaster for their for their
own power. The way you essentially do it is you
convey the people over which you hold somewhat control, uh,
that this is a problem as much as you think
it is a problem, and get them to find a
way to participate in solving the problem. It's a weird concept. Yeah,

(22:16):
it goes It goes back pretty pretty far. You know,
it goes back to the ideas of Thomas Malthus enthusianism
from the eighteen hundreds. Uh. This, this guy back in
the eighteen hundreds already said, look, there are too many
people in the world. The the fact that there are
too many people is the reason things are going wrong.

(22:37):
That's the number one reason hunger, starvation, disease, war, It's
all because we have too many people on the boat.
And so he argued that at some point the population
of the world is going to surpass the ability of
the world to produce enough food for everyone, and that
there will be massive starvation unless you do something. And

(23:01):
then the the argument is that based on where someone
is and given social or global hierarchy, their decision about
who should have to pay the ultimate price of reducing
the population, Who should have to take the hit or
jump off the boat. That's gonna depend on what they
think benefits them the most. You don't see very many

(23:24):
members of Congress, or you don't see very many world
leaders saying, hey, I'm not gonna have children. They're saying, hey,
you know what I'm gonna you know, take I'm gonna
take the hit. Me and all my buddies are getting sterilized.
That's what we're doing instead of going bowling. It's it's
always like, it's always like the greater good is awesome,

(23:45):
and I will fight for it as long as someone
else pays the price. Well, let's talk about the greater
good because in this case, in the best scenario scenario,
if you're nasty, it's you're you're attempting to do the
greatest good. But what does that mean is the greatest

(24:08):
Is it the greatest good in terms of the economic
future of your country? Is I mean, even if you're
like putting, even if you are taking the hit, as
the leader or the group of leaders or whatever that
are at the golf course, decign to get sterilized too.
You you're still going to probably make decisions or lean
towards alienating those who are suffering at the depths of

(24:32):
the inequality pool. They're back. Well. Yeah, and and if
you're if you are thinking in those like utilitarian terms,
the people who can offer things for whatever government or
private enterprise, those are going those people are going to
be prioritized, I believe. Yeah. Unfortunately, even if that's not

(24:56):
what the law or the policy says on paper, that
will tend to be how it works out in practice.
Because let me tell you're referring to our earlier episodes.
If if something like this was proposed in the United States,
lobbyists would love it. It's a field day. Let's just
start carving out the exceptions, you know what I mean,

(25:17):
pay to play baby. But this is a real problem,
and this applies to many other things. But in the
case of population control, we're talking about something very very personal. Right.
This is not like a law saying that everybody, every
individual has to recycle while no global corporation has to.

(25:38):
It's not that kind of inequality. This is telling people
they cannot have children by hook or by crook. Uh.
But one thing that everyone does seem to agree on
is this, and I'm thankful that everyone can agree on this.
The average person or household, not just in India, but
in the world, does a RvEs a better present and

(26:01):
a brighter future. You know, if you if whether or
not you have kids, whether or not you plan to
have kids. I hope it's not a hot take to
say that people should have food security, people should have
access to education and employment opportunities, and you know what
they want to they should have the prospect of raising
a family of their own one day. You know, even

(26:23):
if you're not into one of those things for some reason,
then that shouldn't stop you from supporting other people's pursuit
of those goals. And now we we have to ask ourselves,
what's the solution, you see, fellow conspiracy realist, today's episode
is not a story about the future of India's population,

(26:44):
not really. Instead, it is a story about a strange,
brutal solution applied by the Indian government and applied by
Western foundations, endorsed by the United Nations, and implemented then
with the help of India's government. What did they do?
Like Ashley said, they conspired to sterilize men by the millions,

(27:09):
and they very much succeeded. Here's where it gets crazy. Hey,
you wonder why there's so much skepticism and worry about
things like the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund. Well,
here's a great example for you as we dive into this. Yeah,
here it is, um. I guess we should give an example,

(27:33):
maybe something that we can all imagine as we're thinking
about this, ben Um, we can apply it to us.
So as we're all listening, imagine that you are going
through something really rough. Let's say, uh, somebody just ruptured
a gas line at your house. Now I'm just playing,
that's just what happened to me. Yeah, that's the true
story of folks I started off there, But thank you

(27:56):
for being her path? Are all right? Or let's say
let's say that's just like minor inconvenience, where we're right,
everybody's okay, the dogs are fine, and the family's fine.
But but let's say, okay, well what if we say
this um in our case to be self interested here,
how about we say we woke up one day and

(28:18):
podcasting was done, totally done. That's it. We have to
go back to our earlier skill sets, right right, right, Okay,
And so this is hopefully just hypotheticals. Things are tough,
you know, or maybe you're Industry goes to put for
reasons beyond your control, and one bad thing follows on

(28:40):
the heels of another. You have expensive medical concerns, you
have to provide for family members who likewise have fallen
on tough times. You are unable to get a job,
your bills add up, and you find yourself living out
of your car, living in a friend's house, living in assistance.
Maybe things get even worse, and you're sleeping rough under

(29:03):
the stars wherever you can find it's dry. You're working
odd jobs day by day so that you can scrape
by to live to the next sunrise. And then you know,
now that you find yourself on the bottom of insert
social strata here, you become a very easy target for

(29:23):
other people, bad actors, and you're much more likely to
get certain laws enforced upon you because you obviously cannot
do much to defend yourself. So let's see you get
jammed up by the local police. And they say, all right,
all right, Matt ben fellow conspiracy realist, you're also in
this with us. We've been sleeping under a bridge. Uh,

(29:45):
you guys are loitering. You people are loitering. We're gonna
throw you in jail. We're gonna give you a fine,
and we all know that you cannot afford to pay it,
which will mean that your life gets even work and
you may be in jail longer, depending on which state
this story occurs in. And then we're all panicked. What

(30:05):
are we gonna do? Eventually the cops say, well, you
know there's one thing you could do. You can put
this on, come on back over here, and we're going
to give you a quick sterilization and then you can
just leave. Cool. We can go back under the bridge

(30:28):
if you want. Yeah, sure, just just go under the
knife real quick. We'll be done. Then you just go
on with your day. And that's the left few minutes. Yea,
And our success rate is okay. We'll even give you
this pin and it'll let us know that you've already
done this, so we won't pick you up the next
time for loitering. We'll give you a couple of pills

(30:48):
for the pain, maybe some cash, you know, And and
the odds are pretty good of you not dyeing. You're like,
what is pretty good? Well, they're not great, but they're
there again, besides the pen thing that I was somewhat
joking about, would it surprise you to know that this
actually happened. This happened in India in in the nineteen seventies,

(31:11):
nineteen seventy five. It's that's what it's known as the emergency,
I think is how it's referred to. You been, yes,
the nineteen seventy five emergency. And this is part of
the reason, folks, that Matt was emphasizing India's role as
the largest democracy, because for twenty one months from nineteen

(31:32):
seventy five to nineteen seventy seven, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi
had a state of emergency declared across the entirety of
the country. This was due to the rationalization. The rationale,
I should say, was prevailing internal disturbance. This order gave

(31:53):
the Prime Minister to the ability to cancel elections, the
suspension of old civil liberty, ease, and the dangerous authority
to allow rule by decree, which means in this otherwise
democratic country, for twenty one months, they implemented a style

(32:14):
of governance where a single person or group could say
this is the law, and then that was the law.
And so during the n emergency. The one of the
Prime Minister's children, a guy named Sanjay Gandhi, began a
campaign of mass sterilization population control that was definitely targeting

(32:40):
the poor. There would be people. You will find countless
stories of people who were maybe itinerant workers, maybe sleeping
in fields, maybe trying to catch a train somewhere, getting
jammed up by the cops and having the having it
something distressing ly similar to that. To that story, Matt

(33:01):
and I just told that that was happening to people,
and it was not happening in a vacuum. Because the
Indian government had massive international support from this. Maybe not
in terms of like number of other other people in
the world supporting this idea, but in terms of dollars

(33:22):
and infrastructure and expertise. They were working with some of
the most well off international organizations in the world. Yeah,
they were given millions and millions of dollars by the
World Bank and several other institutions, including the U N
Population Fund, I believe is what it was called. That
may be wrong, Nope, that's it um. Even even organizations

(33:45):
like the Ford Foundation. Yeah, and there are others that
you can read about who gave money towards this goal.
And while all of this money is coming in, there's
a massive effect because it is a huge effort. Um.
In just one year, six point two million Indian men
were sterilized one year, one year. Yeah, um, six point

(34:10):
two million. The only way that I have a mental
framing for something like that is through the United States
COVID nineteen vaccination program. Just imagining the number of people
moving in and out of a huge number of physical
locations where vaccinations were being given across the United States.

(34:32):
That's the only way I can factor in that number
of people going in and out and having a procedure.
I've got one that might help. It's a it's a
twisted version of our old YouTube game we used to play,
you remember the one. I'm sure so I pulled up
the population of countries. Yes, the total populations of countries

(34:54):
that are smaller than this number six point two million. Uh.
Those countries include places like Denmark, Finland, Norway, Oman, Costa Rica, Ireland.
So like the more than the entire population of each
of these countries got sterilized one year. Uh. And then

(35:15):
the list goes on. You know that's also um higher
than the population. Let's let's see, let's do a good one.
That's higher than the population of a couple of different
countries combined. It's higher than the population of Latvia and
Bahrain together. It's high like they sterile. What we're saying is,
if you look at it through that lens, in one year,

(35:37):
they sterilize a country's worth of dudes. Yes, and all
of those people, each one pulled from the reproductive pool,
all of their you know, their genes don't get passed
on anymore. And in some cases they were rewarded for
deciding to take part or being forced to take part

(35:59):
um again. Sometimes people were physically forced to go in
and become sterilized in this program in nine So, as
Ashley pointed out, many people were promised things and many
people did did go along with it. You can you

(36:19):
can read about the public outreach that says things like
the fewer kids who have, the more food there is
to go around, you know, things like that motivational stuff.
But also Ashley is correct in that for many people,
and we're looking more at this forced sterilization of men
at this time, but many people, including including women, didn't

(36:43):
actually get the stuff that they were promised after they
consented to these operations, but a lot of people also
never got the chance to consent because they were forced.
In one case, we found on November twenty nine six
in a rural village aimed Utawar, which is about fifty
miles eighty clicks south of New Delhi. I just put

(37:05):
clicks in their max I know you like that phrase
I love you. So it's uh So, there's this rural village,
smaller place, and the authorities, those folks that we're talking about,
who have the volunteers who have like a quota to
get people sterilized. They have been coming in and trying

(37:29):
to incentivize people, talking about patriotism, this, that and the third.
But then what they ultimately do when when the villagers
aren't going along with it, is they call in the cavalry.
Literally mounted policemen, round up every man over the age
of fifteen, forces them to assemble at a local school,

(37:51):
hearts them by bus off to a government hospital, and
then nearly two d and fifty men were forced into vextsectomys.
Some of the those men had never had children, and
from that point on they never would. Yeah. So in
this specific example, that's horrifying, right, that's right out of
some some kind of dystopian novel, that kind of thing

(38:12):
happening to just citizens. But one thing that makes it
even worse is the fact that there was such a
rush to sterilize so many people at the time. The procedures,
like some of the people not all, but some of
the people giving these procedures performing them, some of the

(38:33):
techniques that they were not safe, and many people died.
At least according to journalist Mara hif Stendahl Um, there
were at least two thousand men, two thousand men that
died because of medical errors during these processes. There these sterilizations,

(38:55):
and here's the thing that's just during the emergency in
the nineteen mid nineteen seventies. There have been sterilization practices
before that in India. And this wasn't a new thing
where people were dying due to these practices. Yeah, this
was not new. Through multiple propaganda programs, awareness campaigns, and more,

(39:18):
the government and the hidden hand of those Western foundations
and institutions sought to cajole people into the sectomes or
into tubligation due to longstanding misconceptions about these uh these surgeries,
as well as very valid concerns, you know what I mean,

(39:39):
especially if if you if you lived nearby a village
where all the people, all the dudes got rounded up
in the sectomead, then you are not gonna be super
open to the friendly, uh warm, fuzzy time propaganda campaigns. Also,

(40:00):
more than one million men were sterilized in India nineteen
seventy one, and over three million were sterilized just two
years later in nine seventy three. We've mentioned a hidden
hand pretty often this episode, and we've we've talked a
little bit about the World Bank, and we've talked a
little bit about some of the some of the places

(40:22):
getting behind this in ways that you might not expect.
Most people associate Forward with like model t s anti Semitism.
And you know, uh, well, I can't say too much
because I drive a forward right right right, I I
drive before and I'm aware of the acronym we can
save the time found on road debt. I get it.

(40:43):
But but how did they get involved? Why? Why? This
is maybe one of the most important parts of this conspiracy.
Will tell you what we mean afterword from our sponsor. Okay,
so a lot of the fear of overpopulation can be

(41:04):
traced back to Malthusian theory, but a lot of the
fear in the modern era can be traced back to
a single book written in nineteen by a biologist from
Stanford named Paul Erlick. He wrote a book called The
Population Bomb, very very dystopian, very pessimistic, because he thought

(41:28):
that he was talking about an existential crisis. I think
it's important to note he wasn't just out with some
ulterior motive. He really did believe this, and he made
these predictions about what was going to happen if population
growth was not uh crippled as soon as possible. He said,

(41:49):
India is doomed. You just have to deal with that.
He said sixty five million Americans are going to starve
to death, and that by his one of his more
specific predictions, that by the year two thousand, England will
not exist. So that should you should hopefully give a
little inspiring chuckle to our friends across the pond. Erlick

(42:13):
was obviously incorrect, But because the book came out in
just a few years before a lot of these policies
get Western support, we can tell you his beliefs. The
things he espoused in The Population Bomb got super popular,
especially with the privileged. The hires up at institutions like

(42:34):
the World Bank and foundations like Ford and Rockefeller, and
so they started putting their money and their expertise where
their eyes were. They started try like taking this book
is inspiration and pushing toward making real world steps that
they thought were the perfect steps to eliminate the threat

(42:56):
of overpopulation. And yeah, of course there is there is
such thing as overpopulation. It's happening. But there are other methods,
other ways to stem the tide, I think, is what
we're saying here. Uh did you you saw that the
There's a great Fox article that's based on a really
great podcast called Future Perfect if you want to dive

(43:19):
in for more information about this and full disclosure, they
are funded in part by some of those same foundations
they explore, and in one of their episodes, they joined
with some historians to study the story of a guy
named Douglas Innsminger, an official at the Ford Foundation. He

(43:39):
created infrastructure for these large scale mass sterilization programs in India.
I mean, if one to wax poetic about it, that
the way I thought of it is under a sheep's
coat of philanthropy. These powerful organizations went full wolf and
intervened in a sovereign nation. Yeah, yeah, they did. They

(44:02):
went in geo style. Baby. Um, it's not an uncommon thing.
It's also not surprising that these are the groups that
were interested in implementing population control. Again, not saying that
you know, the World Bank and you know whatever Rockefell
Air Foundation or Ford Foundation or whatever are inherently evil.

(44:27):
They just are operating from a place of privilege, I
would say, from a from an upper echelon. And you
can imagine how, I don't know why to make them
so interested in the eugenics of it or the culling
of it. I don't know, I don't know why, but
you can definitely see why they They almost I can't

(44:49):
put these thoughts in their head, but you're almost aware
that somebody sitting around the table where this is being discussed, right,
there's like a a discussion of this book by Erlick.
It's not happening. You can imagine that there's at least
three courses. I'm sorry, that's not that's my opinion and
that's not really valid, but that's what I see in

(45:09):
my head. Yeah. Yeah, the idea that uh, the idea
that these people, perhaps with the best of intentions, would
have been would have been so far removed from poverty,
right that they would not have understood, uh, the consequences
of this approach or the alternatives to it, or maybe

(45:32):
they truly felt this was very much a crisis situation
and these inhuman measures where the best recourse, whatever the
case may be. Like you said, man, it's tough to
know their internal motivations, Uh, whatever the case may be.
As India's democracy was suspended, the leadership of the country

(45:57):
use the powers and tools of these groups to danger
since sinister ends and it did result in the death
of people. By the way, you know, I've been calling
this a conspiracy, and it kind of is a conspiracy
because maybe the average person India at the time, in
a rural community, was not aware that this forced vasectomy

(46:18):
was brought to them by the World Bank, were brought
to them by Rockefeller and Ford. But Western institutions and
these leaders praised the practice. They loved it. They were
there on record saying this is great and we're making progress.
In fact that the push to do this was so
extreme that the President of the United States held kind

(46:43):
of held aid for ransom in n Then President Lyndon B.
Johnson said, look, we're not going to provide any food aid,
no more food aid to India, even though you're undergoing
of you know, the threat of a famine right now,
until you put in steps to incentivize sterilization. Yeah. So

(47:04):
not like family planning, like just birth control, sterilization exactly.
And you'll notice there that we discussed how the book
came out in sixty The President Johnson did that in
sixty five because population control programs in India had been
going on since at least nineteen fifty one, when there
were long term plans, like five year plans that were

(47:26):
being put in place. And there's an article on Asian
Studies dot org that you can read all about some
of these plans and see how much money was being
put in, what organizations were involved. It's titled India, the
Emergency and the Politics of Mass Sterilization. Highly recommend you
check that out because it it has been going on
for a long time and literally the President of the

(47:48):
United States, as Ben said, held it held help over
their heads until that terrible thing started happening on a
large scale, right and tying a to certain preconditions is
a common thing in the world of geopolitics. Right, there's
no such thing as a free lunch. As the economists

(48:10):
like to say in what's known as the dismal science,
which is the street name of economy economics. Uh, this
this has real impact. These this has real consequences. So
the steps taken by the Indian government promoting I D
S sterilizations can be seen as a response to the

(48:31):
demands of these powerful organizations, the World Bank, International Planned
Parenthood Federation, UN Fund for Population Activities. Even us A
A I D got involved. So what we're the United
States Agency for International Development. Uh, that was interesting discretion,

(48:53):
that was way off. But but yes, yeah, these they
were involved with this. They were directlee bankrolling this. And
instead of helping people with family planning, these programs immediately
forced these lifelong, lasting, permanent contraceptive methods on a very

(49:15):
reluctant population. And that's this leads us to where India
is today and maybe tomorrow because unfortunately, you know, like
you said, Matt, this story began before the seventy five
emergency and it continued after the nineteen seventies. According to
the u N, India alone was responsible for thirty seven

(49:37):
percent of the world's female sterilizations in two thousand eleven.
And and we also know many many women have died
as a direct result of those sterilizations, which would need
to be its own episode at this point. And although
sterilization has produced results, fertility rates dropped from in the

(50:00):
nine nineties was three point four and dropped to two
point two in it's also of course seeing a massive
amount of controversy. And that's that's where we get to
this point. So incentivizing people to have fewer children to
a to a threshold, it makes sense. But blackmailing a

(50:21):
country to make them enact these programs seems pretty dirty,
and forcing people to do this seems criminal, and and
it certainly seems as for our earlier discussion, like India's
on its way to continue this process, just in a

(50:42):
a different way. Right. I think that's what some of
the planned stuff for for the few states that are
putting forward these new incentives to control the population, it's
just looks a little different. Uh, it may be a
little less harsh, but in the end, it's still deciding
who can and cann't have a family to a certain extent, right, right,

(51:04):
And who should be able to say that, you know,
I believe that in the case of let's say someone
commits a heinous crime, right, someone has committed someone's a
serial killer, just an extreme example, and they get caught,
they go to jail for the rest of their life,
where they get the death penalty, what have you. That

(51:24):
person has excluded themselves from society. That's the kind of
person who doesn't deserve to have the agency to decide
whether or not they want to have a family after
they've been incarcerated for this stuff. And that's that's just
my opinion of making an example off the top of
my head. But I'm only bringing that example up to
argue that for the vast majority of the human population,

(51:50):
they should have the fundamental freedom the agency to make
to make those sorts of choices for themselves. We're we're
not we're not time va sectomy, right. I know many
people who have been who have chosen to be sterilized
for one reason or another, you know, And and they
live happy, fulfilling lives, uh and a big and are

(52:13):
happy with their decision. And I can only assume that
a big part of why they are happy with that
decision is because it was their decision, not someone else's. Yep,
well this was a downer? Was it down? Or? You
know we've got a pepper and some more shows about goblins,

(52:36):
h for sure. Yeah, let's just do that. Let's do
it on different like mythology from D and D every
week or so every couple of weeks. Let's do that.
We can have Robert and Joe from stuff to blow
your mind on. Uh, talk a little bit about that.
I actually I played Dungeons and Dragons with Joe as well,
you know that. Yeah, yeah, I played dn D in

(52:58):
my head, like I like to think about the concept
of playing dn D, but I just never do it. Okay.
I'll tell you what embarrassing things, so this isn't a
complete down and we'll give you something to laugh at, folks.
And that's something you can laugh at as me. Uh.
And when I was younger, I didn't get on with
most people, and I was very much recluse. Uh. And

(53:23):
I bought dn D books and I read the crap
out of them, and I played D and D campaigns
with myself as the d M and as three different characters.
And it's kind of cool though you learned all the different,
you know, skills that you can have with the different characters.

(53:44):
I bet you were you a Was there a sorcerer
and or wizard, a cleric and a warrior or no,
a rogue? Multiple campaigns? Man, it got weird, It got weird. Uh.
You know, you know, need to try for real. I'm
not kidding. Delta Green. Have you heard of this? Delta Green?

(54:08):
Tell me more, tell me more. We're not really allowed
to talk about it much, but we should try Delta Green. Seriously,
it's the green. Is this like a lemon cello thing?
It's kind of like that but involved. Oh okay, yeah,
keep running into that guy. I gotta get different hobbies. Okay, yeah, no,

(54:30):
I'm down. I'm down. Okay, let's do it. Uh. And
in the meantime, we want to hear from you folks.
What what do you think? What is the just decision
for leaders of the world or leaders of a country
to make in this situation. Should they be allowed to
conduct mass coercive sterilization programs or we didn't even talk

(54:53):
about some of the disincentives. Should people run the risk
of losing their job if they don't agree to participate
in sterilizations, or if they don't agree to have one themselves.
They get what what is what is the line? And
what is the way forward? How do we create a
better world for the people here now and the people

(55:16):
to come. And if there is a price to be paid,
then who ultimately pays that price? We want to hear
from you. We want to hear your take or we
try to make it easy to find us online. You
can find us on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook at Conspiracy Stuff.
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(55:39):
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(56:00):
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(56:24):
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(56:45):
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(57:12):
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