Population control in India

Indias population control efforts began in earnest in 1965. Because of strong administration pressures and a technical breakthrough (the IUD was introduced) a vigorous program was launched. The program aimed to lower the birth rate from 4.0 per 1000 to 2.5 by 1975. The planners assumed that the IUD and vasectomy would be the principal methods of contraception that a public bureaucratic-clinical system would be the delivery system that this delivery system would be tied to public health and administered on federal-state principles. Furthermore they felt that the policy design could rely on certain motivational hypotheses that there would be consistent strong government leadership and that population control would be a neutral political issue. Since 1965 there has been a 16-fold increase in family planning expenditures and 5 million sterilizations. The IUD campaign failed largely because of the failure to inform acceptors about possible side effects and to do follow-ups. The author states that the 1969 UN report on population control was useful but failed to point out the weaknesses in program leadership. He concludes that population control is politicially too sensitive. He also looks at the failure in launching a mass commercial distribution scheme for condoms. More research into reproductive biology and contraceptive technology improvement of demographic data and analyses are called for. Population control is the Number 1 development problem of India and its solution will ultimately be Indian. A comment follows the authors observations.