Analyze the success and failure of family planning programme.
Answers
Explanation:
Since the inception of planning, the family planning programme has been introduced in India so as to control the rapid growth of population by resorting to family planning methods. The family planning programme which is an integral part of our national population policy covers schemes of education, health, child care, birth control, family welfare, women’s’ right and nutrition.The term family planning here indicates conscious limitation of the size of the family to the optimum level by adopting voluntary approach. The small size of family necessarily paves the way for the improvement of its standard of living. Therefore, by the term family planning we mean, “to have children by choice and not by chance, by design and not by accident.”
Therefore, the main thrust of the family planning programme is the conscious acceptance of small family norm and proper spacing of the children. In recent times, the Government has renamed the scheme as Family Welfare Programme.
In keeping with the democratic traditions of the country, the family welfare programme seeks to promote the small family norm and reproduction and child health through free and voluntary choice.Family welfare programme includes conscious family limitation, where babies will born by choice not by chance and maintenance of family welfare at an optimum level by providing sound health and sanitation facilities.Family welfare programme is geared up throughout the country along with other development programme so as to contain the rate of growth of population along with maintaining minimum health and sanitation facilities.
Broadly speaking, the family planning programme adopts three methods:
(i) Sterilisation (providing full protection),
(ii) I.U.D. insertion (providing 95 per cent protection) and
(iii) Regular use of oral pills (providing full protection) along with regular use of conventional contraceptives (which normally provide 50 per cent protection).
In India, the sterilisation drive has been facing a sharp fluctuation in its achievement. Table 6.12(b) reveals that the total number of people accepting and performing sterilisation as a family planning method has increased from 1.33 million in 1970-71 to 3.12 million in 1972-73 and then it slid down to only 0.94 million in 1973-74.
Under the blanket cover of emergency, sterilisation drive was launched ruthlessly and thereby its number swelled suddenly to 8.26 million during 1976-77.
But after a high profit of such ruthless drive and the defeat of the Congress (I) Government in 1977 General Election on this issue, the Family Planning Department folded the network of this programme and the number of sterilisations declined sharply to only 0. 95 million in 1977-78.
But after 1978-79, the acceptance of sterilisation as a family planning method has maintained an increasing trend from 1.8 million in 1978-79 to 2.79 in 1981-82 and then to 4.90 million m 1985-86.
In recent years, the number of sterilisations performed has also maintained a stability as the number varied from 4.09 million in 1991-92 to 4.49 million in 1993-94 and then to 4.34 million in 1994-95.
Moreover, the percentage of couples protected effectively by different methods has been increasing over time. Table 6.13 reveals this definite trend.Besides, non-family planning measures like raising the age of marriage, reducing the proportion of married female to total females in the age group of 15-44 etc. are also playing an important role in reducing the birth rate of the population.
In India, the proportion of married females in the age group 15-44 has declined from 85.75 per cent in 1961 to 80.48 per cent in 1981 and it is estimated that the same proportion may come down to 77.1 per cent in 1991 and then to 73.6 per cent in 2001.
Although the family planning programme has not been able to attain the desirable rate of success but these various policies and programmes adopted in this direction have helped containing population growth. The Total Fertility Rate, a measure of the average number of children born to a woman during her reproductive period has dropped from 5.2 in 1971 to 3.1 in 2001.
The crude birth rate has come down from 41.2 per thousand populations in 1971 to 25.0 per thousand in 2002 as per the estimates of Sample Registration System (SRS).