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This article throws light upon the four phases through which the population policy of the government of India has passed. The phases are: 1. Pre-Independence Period 2. The Period of Neutrality, 1947-51 3. The Period of Experimentation, 1951-61 4. The Beginning of the Population Control Policy 1961 to 2000.
1. Pre-Independence Period:
Before independence, the Britishers did not consider population growth as a problem. Their attitude towards birth control was one of indifference because they never wanted to interfere with the values, beliefs, customs and traditions of Indians. That is why this phase is called the Period of Indifference.
However, the intelligensia in India was aware of the problem of growing population and did advocate birth control. Among them P.K. Wattal was the pioneer who wrote a book on Population Problem in India in 1916, followed by R.D. Karve, Rabindranath Tagore, RN. Sapru, Jawaharlal Nehru and Bhore Committee among others who advocated birth control. Gandhiji also favoured birth control but emphasised natural methods like self-control or abstinence and safe period instead of artificial methods of birth control.
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Prof. Gunnar Myrdal wrote about this period thus:
“During the last time of British colonialism, the intelligensia prepared background thoughts related to birth control. The logical and systematic policies of birth control were put in force after independence.”
2. The Period of Neutrality, 1947-51:
The period following independence and before the beginning of the planning era was one of neutrality. The Government of India was busy with the post-independence problems like rehabilitation of the people following the Partition, reorganisation of the States and Pakistan’s invasion of Kashmir.
However, at one of the meetings of the Planning Commission in 1949, Jawaharlal Nehru laid emphasis on the need of family planning programme in India.
3. The Period of Experimentation, 1951-61:
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During the first decade (1951- 61) of planned economic development, family planning as a method of population control was started as a Government programme in India. 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.”
This programme was started on an experimental basis with a Plan outlay of Rs. 65 lakh in the First Plan and Rs. 5 crore in the Second Plan. It was based on clinical approach to provide service to those who were motivated to visit family planning centres set up by the Government.
4. The Beginning of the Population Control Policy 1961 to 2000:
With the rapid growth of population in the 1961 Census by 21.5 per cent, the Extension Approach to family planning was adopted in the Third Plan. This approach emphasised the adoption of an educational approach to family planning through PanchayatSamitis, Village Development Committees and other groups so as to change the attitudes, behaviour and knowledge of the people towards family planning. The family planning programme was also made target oriented and Rs. 27 crore were allocated during the Plan for this purpose.
The target was to reduce the birth rate to 25 per 1000 persons by 1973. To make this programme more popular, Cafeteria Approach was adopted. Under it, the couples were given advice on different types of family planning methods to be adopted. The choice of a particular method was left to them.
For the effective working of the family planning programme, a separate Department of Family Welfare was created in the Ministry of Health and Family Planning in 1966.
High priority was accorded to the family planning programme during the Fourth Plan by allocating Rs. 330 crore for this. The aim was to reduce the birth rate to 25 per 1000 persons by 1980-81.
For this, efforts were to be directed towards:
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(a) social acceptability for a small family;
(b) increasing information and knowledge about family planning methods both in urban and rural areas;
(c) making available the various devices and equipment to the couples. Another important measure was the integration of family planning services with health, maternity and child health care and nutrition.
Thus the family planning programme was made more broad-based. To make this programme more effective, selective approach was adopted under which couples in the reproductive age group of 25 to 35 years were persuaded to undergo sterilisation.
The 1971 Census showed a rapid growth in population by 24.6 per cent. To control this, the Fifth Plan laid down the ambitious target of reducing the birth rate to 30 per 1000 by the end of the Plan (1978-79) and to 25 per 1000 by 1983-84.
For achieving this, it proposed to protect 33 per cent of couples against conception by 1978-79 against 16-17 per cent at the end of the Fourth Plan. To implement it, monetary incentive was given to couples undergoing sterilisation. This was followed by compulsory sterilisation under The National Emergency in 1975.
For the first time, National Population Policy was announced in 1976 to mount “a direct assault on the problem of numbers.”
Its salient features were:
(1) to raise the age of marriage for girls to 18 years and for boys to 21 years;
(2) to take special measures to raise the level of female education in all States;
(3) raising the monetary incentive to persons undergoing sterilisation according to the number of children in the family; and
(4) additional incentives to Government employees undergoing sterilisation, having upto two children.
Targets of sterilisation were fixed in all the states. As a result, the number of sterilisations rose from 9.4 lakh in 1973-74 to 82.6 lakh in 1976-77. But this was due to the adoption of compulsory sterilisation by the majority of State governments.
Taking advantage of the emergency, many States resorted to unfair and coercive methods to sterilise people of all ages. This led to mass resentment and unrest among the people. As a result, family planning programme became very unpopular.
In the post-emergency period, the Janata Government announced a New Population Policy in 1977.
The main features of this policy were:
(a) renaming the family planning programme into family welfare programme;
(b) fixing the marriage age for girls at 18 years and for boys at 21 years. This has been implemented by the Child Marriage Restraint (Amendment) Act, 1978;
(c) makingsterilisation voluntary;
(d) including population education as part of normal course of study; etc.;
(e) monetary incentive to those who go in for sterilisation and tubectomy;
(f) private companies to be exempted in corporate taxes if they popularise birth control measures among employees;
(g) use of media for spreading family planning in rural areas, etc.
This policy put an end to compulsory sterilisation and laid emphasis on voluntary sterilisation. This slowed down the family planning programme. As a result, the number of sterilisations fell from 82.6 lakh in 1976-77 to 9 lakh in 1977-78.
The Sixth Plan laid down the long-term demographic goal of reducing the net reproduction rate (NRR) to 1 by 2000 by reducing crude birth rate to 21, crude death rate to 9, infant mortality rate to less than 60 per 1000, and couple protection rate (CPR) to 60 per cent.
The goal of attaining NRR of 1 was revised to 2006-11 in the Seventh Plan by reducing crude birth rate to 29, crude death rate to 10.4, infant mortality rate to 90 per 1000, and couple protection rate to 42 per cent. Further, the Seventh Plan laid emphasis on the two-child family norm. To make it successful, it intensified family planning and maternity and child health (MCH) programmes.
To achieve the goal of NRR of 1, the Eighth Plan extended it to the period 2011-16. The targets laid down during the Plan were crude birth rate at 26, infant mortality at 70 per 1000 and couple protection rate to 56 per cent.
To achieve these, the Government replaced the earlier Population Control Approach by the Reproductive and Child Health Approach in October 1997 to stabilise population and improve quality of life. The focus of this approach is on decentralised area specific macro-planning. It led to several new schemes for improving quality and coverage of welfare services for women, children and adolescents such as child survival, safe motherhood programme, universalimmunisationprogramme (UIP), reproductive tract infections (RTI), etc.
During the Ninth Plan, the earlier approach of using NRR (Net Reproduction Rate) of 1.0 was changed to a Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of 2.1. This level of TFR had been projected to be achieved by 2026 in the Plan. Further, with increased RCH (Reproductive and Child Health), the targets laid down by the end of the Ninth Plan (2002) had been infant mortality rate of 50 per 1000, crude birth rate of 23, total fertility rate of 2.6 and CPR of 60 per cent.
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. Women empowerment is, therefore, an important approach adopted in the Tenth Five Year Plan for development of women.
To this effect, a National Plan of Action for Empowerment of Women, with a view to translating the National Policy of Empowerment of Women in to action in a time bound manner has been adopted as a priority agenda for action by the Department of Women and Child Development (DWCD) of the Ministry of HRD.
So the Government’s population policy has shifted from population control to family welfare and to women empowerment.
Expenditure on Family Welfare:
Table 1 below shows the Provision for expenditure on family welfare in various five year plans upto the Tenth Plan.
Upto the Fifth Plan, expenditure on family planning was very small. It was only from the Sixth Plan that it had been increasing both in absolute terms and as percentage of total plan outlay. In absolute terms, it increased from Rs. 1,448 crores during the Sixth Plan to Rs. 15,120 crore during the Ninth Plan. As the percentage of total plan outlay, it ranged between 1.3 to 1.4 per cent upto the Eight Plan.
It was only in the Ninth Plan that it had increased to 3.1 per cent. It has been stipulated at 3.0 per cent in the Tenth Plan. This shows that except during the Ninth Plan, the Government did not provide adequate financial assistance to the family welfare programme. It was in the Ninth Plan that the Government announced the National Population Policy on 15 February, 2000 which is discussed below in detail.