Mid UN projections of the world’s seven
billionth baby to be born in India on Monday, demographers today
struck a note of caution, asking the government to reposition family
welfare efforts.
Ashish Bose, member, National Population
Commission chaired by the PM, today asked the Government to wind up
its family welfare department and divert funds to education and skill
development of the existing population. Half of our people are below
25 years; 65 pc are below 35 years. “As such, the department is doing
nothing,” he said, adding that even the Commission last met two years
ago, indicating a lack of commitment on the front.
S.C. Gulati, member, Government’s technical
working group on population, said, “China followed one child norm and
reduced the population growth rate to 0.6 pc”.
Despite crores going into the National Rural
Health Mission launched in 2005, the target of reducing Total
Fertility Rate to 2.1 by 2012 looks unattainable. India had however
recorded a decadal population growth of 17.64 per cent in 2011 Census,
the lowest in 90 years.
At the current rate of decline, it will take
Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and
Chhattisgarh 18 to 45 years to achieve a TFR of 2.1. The high TFR
states (with TFR over 3) also have over 40 per cent of our population,
adding to pressures on resources like food and land.
“Education and provision of reproductive health
services and nutrition were responsible for achieving the TFR of 2.1
in Kerala in 1988 and in Tamil Nadu in 1993,” Health Ministry
officials told The Tribune. At present, India has a TFR (the average
number of children expected to be born per woman during her entire
span of reproductive period) of 2.6, ranging between 1.7 per cent in
Kerala and 3.9 per cent in Bihar.
Demographers agree that India has not done well
on the family planning front. Even today the unmet need for
contraception is a whopping 27 per cent and 20 per cent is unwanted
fertility. “It only means you are unable to provide contraceptives
even to those who need them. Your whole programme focuses on
sterilisations and not on condoms, intra uterine devices and oral
pills, which help space children. The Government must bring in
injectibles, and must counsel couples and tell that every
contraception comes with some side effects; to manage these effects
the health system needs to be equipped,” said Poonam Muttreja, head,
Population Foundation of India.
