INDIA’S POPULATION POLICY

IN NEWS:

Recently, a Private Member’s Bill proposing incentives in taxation, education and employment for people who limit their family size to two children was introduced in the Rajya Sabha.

POPULATION STATS:

• With a population of 1.38 billion, India is the second most populous country in the world behind China.
  • Close to 30% of India’s population is in the age group 0-14 years.
  • Elderly (60+ years) population accounts for 8% of the country’s population.
  • The working age group 15-59 years accounts for 62.5% of India’s population and will reach the highest proportion of approximately 65% in 2036.
• According to UN Population Fund, India’s population growth rate is declining and is presently at 1.2%.
• The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) at national level is 2.2 per woman. 
• According to the UN’s 2019 World Population Prospects report, India’s population is projected to overtake China by 2027. It also projects India’s population to be 1.5 billion by 2050.

HISTORY OF FAMILY PLANNING:

I. Till 1951: Period of Indifference/neutrality

• The Britishers did not consider population growth as a problem. Their attitude was one of indifference because they never wanted to interfere with the beliefs and traditions of Indians. After independence, the new government was busy with problems like partition, rehabilitation, reorganization and Pakistan’s invasion.

II. 1952-1972: Period of Awareness generation & Attitude change

• The National Family Planning Programme was launched in 1952 with the objective of “reducing birth rate to the extent necessary to stabilise the population at a level consistent with the requirement of the national economy.” It was based on Clinical Approach to provide service to those who were motivated to visit family planning centers set up by the Government.

III. 1972-1977: Period of direct action

• The 1971 Census showed a rapid growth in population by 24.6 %. To control this, National Population Policy was announced in 1976 to mount “a direct assault on the problem of numbers.
• Its salient features included raising of marriage, incentives for sterilization and special measures for promoting female education. However, during the emergency period, many States resorted to unfair and coercive methods to sterilize people. As a result, family planning programme became very unpopular.

IV. 1977-2000: Family welfare phase

• A New Population Policy was announced in 1977. The main features of this policy included renaming the family planning programme into family welfare programme, making sterilization voluntary and using media for spreading family planning in rural areas.
• Besides this, several new schemes for women, children and adolescents such as child survival, safe motherhood programme, and universal immunization programme (UIP) were introduced.

V. 2000-Present: Empowerment phase

• In 2001, the National Policy for Empowerment of Women was adopted with the ultimate objective of ensuring women their rightful place in society by empowering them as agents of socio-economic change and development.

NATIONAL POPULATION POLICY, 2000:

• The basic aim of this policy is to cover various issues of maternal health, child survival and contraception and to make reproductive health care accessible and affordable for all.

Objectives:

1. Immediate Objective: Address the unmet needs for contraception, health care infrastructure and health personnel and to provide integrated service delivery for basic reproductive and child health care.

2. Medium Term Objective: To bring the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) to replacement level by 2010 through vigorous implementation in inter-sectorial operational strategies.

3. Long Term Objective: Achieve a stable population by 2045 at a level consistent with the requirements of sustainable economic growth, social development, and environment protection.
TARGET Vs. REALITY:

EVALUATION OF POLICIES:

The policies are considered to have attained limited success. This is because:

• Failed to attain targets: Despite having population policies for decades, India continues to have a positive population growth rate. None of the targets such as fertility rates, birth rates and mortality rates have been attained. Also, issues such as child marriage, teenage pregnancies, son preference and poor commitment from men continues to plague family planning.    
• Narrow perspective: The policies give much importance to contraception and sterilization. The basic prerequisites of meaningfully controlling population such as poverty alleviation, improving the standards of living and the spread of education are not given adequate attention.
• Gender bias: The measures appear to convey that the women will bear the burden of population control rather than men. This is borne out by the fact that there has been a steady decline in vasectomies over the last two decades and presently over 97 per cent of sterilizations are tubectomies of women.
• Limited role for other stakeholders: The NPP commits the same mistake which had been made by the earlier population policies. It depends upon its implementation on the bureaucracy rather than on NGOs.
• Negative perception: The use of coercion during the Emergency (1976-77) caused a serious resentment among the masses. On a national scale, the 2000 policy was not publicized and hence failed to generate mass support in favor of population control.
• Limited resources: India lacked the necessary facilities to successfully implement the policy. The insufficient infrastructure owing to lack of trained staff, lack of adequate aptitude among the staff and limited use or misuse of the equipment for population control resulted in failure of the policy.

OTHER MEASURES BY THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA:

• Jansankhya Sthirata Kosh:
  • The Government set up the JSK (formerly National Population Stabilization Fund) in 2004-05 with a one-time grant of Rs.100 crore. It implements two schemes:
    1. Prerna Strategy: - To help push up the age of marriage of girls and delay in first child and spacing in second child the birth of children in the interest of health of young mothers and infants.
    2. Santushti Strategy: - Under this strategy, Jansankhya Sthirata Kosh, invites private sector gynecologists and vasectomy surgeons to conduct sterilization operations in Public Private Partnership mode.
• Measures involving ASHA workers:
  • Scheme for Home delivery of contraceptives by ASHAs
  • Scheme for ASHAs to ensure spacing in births, for which they are incentivized
  • Scheme for provision of pregnancy testing kits and drug kits to facilitate the early detection and decision making for the outcome of pregnancy.
• Introduction of the new devices such as Antara, Chaya and Cu IUCD 375
• Celebration of World Population Day on 11th July.

WAY FORWARD:  

• For the weakest sections of our population – the poor, the rural, the less educated and the minorities- children are the primary source of security to protect them in times of crisis, in old age, in conflict and disasters. Hence a population policy that decrees a two-child family will be disproportionately affect these sections.
• Rather, India has to stabilise population without coercive policies. For this, the government needs to raise budgetary allocations, address the large unmet need for family planning services and provide more contraceptive choices in public health systems. Simultaneous investments to enhance women’s education, health status and greater participation in the workforce can contribute to reducing fertility rates.  
• Population is not a ‘problem’ but rather an asset. This potential is greater in India because of the high proportion of young people in the population. However, we can harness this demographic dividend only through investments in human resource in the form of education, healthcare and skill development.

PRACTICE QUESTION:

Q. The family planning strategies in India are believed to have attained only limited success. Discuss. Suggest measures to address these issues?