(Inaugural address by Jawaharlal Nehru at the seventh session of the WHO Regional Committee at New Delhi on September 21, 1954)
You deal with various aspects of health — with the fight against malaria and other scourges or, on the other hand, with maternity and child welfare and related problems. You are, I believe, primarily concerned with physical health; but I know you will agree that mental health is in a sense even more important. For mental health, to a large extent, governs physical health. If the mind of the individual or of the group is disturbed, it becomes difficult for the body to find equilibrium or any proper balance.
We live in days when there is a great deal of disturbance in the mental apparatus of humanity. Even though your Organization may not touch upon these matters directly, I imagine that the kind of work WHO is doing must have a considerable effect on the disturbed state of the world’s mental health. We are faced with many problems which do not easily yield to satisfactory solution. In the realm of politics, specifically, one finds attempts being made to solve these problems by what might be called the direct approach. One goes along head foremost in the effort to solve them, usually coming across somebody else’s head which is bent on solving the problems in the opposite direction. Then the two heads come into conflict.
It may be that it is easier to consider and to solve this kind of problems in a rather indirect way with indirect approaches. The indirect approach sometimes reaches the desired objectives much sooner than what I have called the direct approach because it undermines and goes around the defences of the opposition which it may have to meet. It takes them almost unawares, while the direct aggressive approach often leads to direct aggressive defence and conflict occurs.
I mention that because the activities of some of the important organs of the United Nations, like WHO and UNESCO or others, would appear to be some distance removed from the political conflicts of the world. In these activities it is possible to adopt an approach which does not bring about active opposition and conflict. You use the direct approach, of course in dealing directly with health problems. This is certainly the correct approach. But it also becomes the indirect approach in dealing with world problems of another kind — the mental conflicts, the political events — because it can produce an atmosphere which soothes and which enables people at least to talk to each other in a quiet and dispassionate way. Therefore, quite apart from the good work that these agencies are doing directly, there is the indirect aspect of their work which can help create an atmosphere favourable to the solution of our daily problems in the political sphere.
The direct work that you do in regard to health is particularly needed and welcome in the countries of this region from which you as representatives have come together today. In health matters these countries are rather backward and the more we can do to improve health and sanitation, the better. There are, of course, many different aspects of this work and you who are dealing with this work know much more about them than I know. But the one aspect which seems to me to have greater importance than any other is work that concerns children. I think that first priority should always be given to children — to the young people who are building for the future. They are the essential ‘human material’ which has to be looked after first and above all else. I do not mean to say that you should ignore others; but after all it is easier to deal with children than with those who are confirmed in their habits and their ways. And our children are our tomorrow.
For this reason I hope that in all these countries, whether from the point of view of health or other similar points of view, the children will always be considered first and that provision will be made for their proper growth, adequate opportunities being given them to live in an environment suited to the development of their full powers and creativity. Nothing is so sad for me as to see little children not looked after and not cared for, not having the basic needs met which should be fulfilled for every child — quite apart from the loving care that a child deserves. If we can provide even some background for raising levels of child welfare — not merely by putting up more clinics and hospitals, but in a wider sense by creating a better environment for children to grow up in — then it will be a very great thing indeed that we have accomplished.
In many of the countries that you represent here today populations are large and growing larger every year. Some people are greatly alarmed at the rate of population growth in the countries of SouthEast Asia. I myself do not like it. I should like this rapid growth to be checked. But I am not alarmed about it and I see no reason, as some people do, to consider that the end of the world is coming because some populations are getting bigger and bigger.
I think we should take a balanced view of these matters. While certainly working to check the growth of the population in the best ways that we can devise, we should nevertheless not get cold feet and draw up imaginative statistics of what the world’s population may be in 20 or 30 or 50 years from now. I am amazed when I see eminent statisticians working on some imaginary basis to produce fancy figures of what the population of India will be in 30 or 40 years hence. They seem to assume that if there is a certain rate of increase at any given time, this rate will necessarily continue, that every year the population will go on increasing and practically nobody will die and ultimately you will get to the dangerous point they predict.
Of course, the fact remains that the population problem is an important problem and should be dealt with. Efforts must certainly be made to control it. Even though the growth of the population may not lead to any such grave crisis, it undoubtedly results in a lowering of standards. Moreover, we cannot raise standards of living very much if the population goes on increasing at a rate so rapid that economic gains are offset by it. We have not only to catch up with it in raising the standards of our peoples and come to what we consider a normal economic level, but we must also meet the rise of the population which tends to pull that level down.
One has to deal with the population problem in this way and make people appreciate the need for seeing it in these terms. Many persons who discuss this question talk about it either theoretically or academically or heatedly, bringing into the argument their own particular prejudices and their own special outlooks. Neither approach is very helpful because in this matter — as, indeed, in all such matters — one has to do with human beings. It amazes me how often we forget the human being in our statistical conferences. We think in terms of blocks and curves or other such figures, forgetting that all these things represent individual men, women and children not very different from us.
I should like therefore, when I talk about the human approach to the population problem, to stress the need to remember that it is human beings we have to deal with. They are not blocks, they are not some mechanical gadgets that you can play about with and order about. Not even the most authoritarian state can get very far in this way. It may go some distance towards teaching people how to act as regimented human beings, but not even in this can it go very far. Much less can such things be done by the State which is not authoritarian.
You have to treat people as individual human beings who must be convinced, who must be made to understand and must be won over to any cause we seek to further. Also, since it is in this way that we must deal with human beings, we cannot deal with them effectively if we presume to speak to them as their superiors. No person who goes to another with an attitude of superiority is likely to find any kind of real opening to the mind or the heart of the other man. There is too much of this superior approach of ‘doing good to others’, too much of imagining that we are better than others. We may know a little more, we may have more comforts, we may have more privileges. But the presumption that we are better than others just because of these things is, I think, not only totally unjustified but also foolish.
Any division of people into various grades and classes of superiority or inferiority is untenable. No one, of course, would claim that all human beings are equal in character, in working capacity and so forth. Nevertheless, the approach to other human beings on the basis of inequality of any kind — whether it be of class, or race or of nationality — is a wrong approach. It does not lead to results. One has to win the goodwill and the friendship of the persons one deals with.
Although I may not know much about many subjects, I do know something about the masses of human beings who live in India and I think they are very fine material. They have their failings and their weaknesses — many of them, such as all of us have — but they are fine material provided they are given opportunities. I have no doubt that this applies to the other countries in this region and in other parts of the world. Given opportunities our people are fine material. These opportunities must come. As a part of these opportunities the friendly human approach of equals to equals must also prevail. If you want to teach them something, then try also to learn something from them. Make them feel that you are both teachers and learners. Then you are on a level where you are welcomed and what you say has some effect. Otherwise you or I may go and deliver a harangue to them and come back, imagining that we have done our duty but probably leaving little trace behind us.
So, in conclusion, I should like to lay stress on three aspects of your work. Of these, one is the special importance of children and their health. Another is the human approach to the masses who live in this part of the world — the need to think of them always as individuals and not as graphs or curves or figures. And the third is the necessity always to remember that physical health is only a small part of total health, the rest being mental health. For if we do not have mental health, physical health will go to pieces. Therefore, in an indirect way — not directly, but in your own indirect way — you are trying to help soften the conflicts that exist in the world and thereby creating an atmosphere which may contribute to the solution of the world’s problems.
