Loss of control

A deputy controller of one of the most popular broadcasting stations, his star was on the rise.

The shock caused by his recent suicide was vivid on the face of everyone. Many could not help but ask if I knew ‘that good natured, humble and honest looking fellow’.

The exact details were anybody’s guess, but it seems that his mistress of six years was pregnant and wanted to become his wife. Blackmailed by her, he had a quiet word about his dilemma with the Director General. Since he was already the father of a child with his wife, the undesired pregnancy not only posed a threat to his career but had much larger implications. If it became known by the authorities, not only would every member of the station’s staff lose their annual family planning bonus, but the promotion of the DG, who was nominally also the chairman of the family planning committee, would be blocked, leaving a permanent blot on his CV. In other words, everybody in this multi-channel media group, with a workforce of several hundred, would suffer: on family planning issues, the employees of an organisation are all in the same boat. To get round the regulations, and also to get a ‘certificate of authorised birth’, the only options for the deputy controller were to submit his resignation or, in order to keep his job, get a divorce, surrender the custody of his first child and enable his second child to be born under legal conditions. Apparently a devoted home maker, his wife of many years was outraged by such a proposal. She made a scene at the station and ridiculed the DG for breaking up a marriage while the station was promoting family values. She threatened to report the matter to a higher authority for the violation of basic law.

The next thing his colleagues heard was that the deputy controller had jumped from the twenty-third floor luxury apartment he shared with his family.

Growing up in a country where over fifty students are normally packed into a classroom, and as many as ten young women were until recently forced to live together for a good part of their university education and share facilities with ninety others on a single floor, I have long been sympathetic to family planning policy. Over the years, I have argued that it has been of benefit in a country where many still believe that a woman has an almost religious duty to give birth to a son. The policy was never watertight, indeed I know of many who used legal loopholes to have more than one child.

Yet in giving outsiders a political and financial stake in the intimate lives of individuals, the policy seems almost barbaric. This tragedy has made me think twice.