Making available universal access to information/counselling, and
services for fertility regulation and contraception with a huge range
of choices.
Containing the spread of AIDS, boosting better coordination
between the management of reproductive tract infections (RTI)
and sexually transmitted infections (STI) and the National AIDS
Control Organisation (NACO).
Preventing and controlling communicable diseases.
Integrating Indian medicine systems (AYUSH) in reproductive and
child health services.
Vigorously furthering the small family norm.
Bringing about a convergence of all related social programmes so
that family planning and welfare becomes a people-centric
programme.
The NPP 2000 is different from the previous population regulation
programmes in that here, for the first time, the population problem was
seen in combination with child survival, maternal health, women
empowerment and contraception issues.
Evolution of India’s Population Policies :-
Even before independence, attempts were made to come up with
recommendations and solutions to India’s burgeoning population
problem. The efforts both pre- and post-independence are mentioned
below.
Radha Kamal Mukherjee Committee (1940): In 1940, the Indian
National Congress appointed a Committee headed by a social
scientist Radha Kamal Mukherjee to suggest solutions to arrest the
population which has started increasing rapidly after 1921. The
committee recommended self-control, generating awareness of
cheap and safe birth control measures, discouraging polygamy,
among others, as measures to bring down the rate of population
growth.
Bhore Committee: The Health Survey and Development committee
under Sir Joseph Bhore recommended ‘deliberate limitation of
family’ as a measure to control the population growth. This
committee was set up in 1943 and submitted its report in 1946.
India became one of the first developing countries to come up with
a state-sponsored family planning programme in the 1950s.
A population policy committee was established in 1952. However,
the policies framed in the early fifties were largely arbitrary and so
no successful.
In 1956, a Central Family Planning Board was set up and its focus
was on sterilisation.
In 1976, GOI announced the first National Population Policy. Some
of the measures to check the population growth as part of this
policy include:
Increased the minimum legal marriageable age for boys and
girls to 21 and 18 respectively.
Providing monetary incentives for employing birth control.
Improving women’s literacy levels through formal and
informal channels.
Population was made a criteria in deciding the quantum of
central assistance to states.
Using the different forms of media to popularise family
welfare programmes.
Introducing population education into the formal education
system.
During the Emergency period (1975-77), coercive measures were
used to reduce the population growth. There were mass forced
sterilisations. This, however, backfired as it discredited the entire
family planning programme of the government.
In 1977, after the Emergency ended, the new government
discarded the use of force in family planning and the family
planning programme was renamed as the family welfare
programme.
The National Health Policy was adopted in 1983 which
emphasised ‘securing the small family norm through voluntary
efforts and moving towards the goal of population stabilization’.
A Committee on Population was appointed in 1991 which
submitted its report in 1993 in which it recommended the formu-
lation of a National Population Policy to take a ‘a long-term holistic
view of development, population growth, and environmental
protection’ and to ‘suggest policies and guidelines [for] formulation
of programmes’ and ‘a monitoring mechanism with short- medium-
and long-term perspectives and goals’.
Accordingly, an Expert Group headed by Dr. MS Swaminathan
was set up to create the draft national population policy.
The National Population Policy finally came into force in 2000.
