Centre to Study Child Marriage Law Proposals.   The New Delhi Centre is readying laws to prevent child marriages and grant National Commission of Minorities constitutional status. The Cabinet will also discuss the Child Marriage Restraint Act 1929 that provides for the imposition of fines in case of Hindu marriages among children but does not make the act null and void. It speaks of heavy fines, but in reality they are seldom imposed and children below the age of 16 continue to be married, especially in rural areas. The new laws aim to reduce such occurrences and end them completely.      November 23, 2004   Statesman (India)

Women on the Rise in India Feel the Riptide of Tradition; Course on How to Be a Dutiful Housewife Has Strong Resonance.   In preparation for her imminent marriage, Mangtani, 23, is nearing completion of a popular three-month course on how to be the ideal Indian wife. The course emphasizes household chores, keeping sex to a minimum and advises that the key to blissful relations is to think of your husband as your god. It recommends deference to mothers-in-law, who typically live under the same roof. The teachings serve as a reminder of the power of tradition. Such lessons might seem redundant in this nation where traditional views of marriage are entrenched. In most cases, parents arrange their children's marriages and if they are parents of the groom expect substantial dowries, even though the practice has been outlawed. However Internet matchmaking services are empowering young Indians to choose their mates. India has one of the world's lowest rates of divorce largely because of the stigma it confers on women, but the percentage of marriages that end that way has risen steadily. To social conservatives, such trends represent a threat to India's family-oriented culture where every year, more than 6,000 Indian women are murdered by their husbands and in-laws for failing to provide bigger dowries. By encouraging women to remain subservient there is no desire to thwart women's progress but to remind husbands to treat their wives with tenderness and respect. Funded by a wealthy Bombay family, the institute charges no tuition for its marriage classes and about 3,000 young women have taken the course. After marriage, they are told the bride is going to serve the family and turn that home into a heaven. The bride should do everything according to the wishes and orders of the mother-in-law and father-in-law, who are never wrong. The wife is told she should sleep after her husband and wake up before him. Her husband's happiness alone is her life's goal. She should not go anywhere without her husband's permission. A husband is told that he should "never raise his hand to hit his wife"; and "sometimes praise her good qualities." The couple are told that the less sex the better and recommend sex only once in their marriage warning that more frequent sex "reduces your lifespan."      November 08, 2004   Washington Post

Focus on Protocols in Tackling Maternal Mortality.   The maternal mortality rate in India (580/one lakh live births) continues to be high. In Kerala, the rate is lower than the country average, but fares badly as more than 97% of deliveries take place in hospitals. There are no policies on how emergency cases should be handled and no attempts to evaluate the quality of obstetric care. In the West every emergency maternity admission is inquired into and the doctors who handled each case have to explain the protocols they follow. Every maternal death should be studied and procedural protocols evolved. There must be transparency regarding the protocols followed in each complicated obstetric case. Three key factors are: creating awareness among the community on distress signals, the connectivity to health service providers and the First Referral Units should be strengthened to handle emergency cases. Getting the act together at the tertiary care centres needs immediate attention. A course was organised as part of AMC's Gender in Medical Education Project, a WHO-funded initiative to bring about a gender perspective in medical education through curriculum changes and gender sensitisation programmes for the medical fraternity.      August 11, 2004   Hindu (The)

Condom Dispensers for City Streets Soon.   The Maharashtra District and Aids Control Society (MDACS) plans to install more than a 100 condom vending machines across the city as part of a pilot study. If the project is successful, the number of machines could go up to 300. The organisation had decided not to distribute the condoms free as previously the experiment did not work and the machines were vandalised. Mumbai's municipal corporators are lobbying for condom vending machines to be installed at check posts and railway stations but want the condoms to be free. The civic administration has turned down this demand.      May , 2004   Midday.com

Female Condoms Make Their Debut in India .   A condom for women was launched in the Indian market as the result of a joint effort by the Hindustan Latex Limited (HLL) and Britain-based Female Health Company (FHC). The product is a strong, soft, transparent 17-centimetre polyurethane sheath inserted in the vagina before sexual intercourse. It protects the vagina and cervix. It is odourless, stronger than latex and can be used with water-based and oil-based lubricants.      February 13, 2004   Push newsfeed

India: Government to Take More Stern Steps to Control Population.   The Chennai Health Department will increase the number of no scalpel vasectomies by 10% as a part of their population control program. According to the records, an average of 35,000 operations are performed every month and while about 500 centres perform laproscopic tubectomy; the others follow conventional methods of surgery. Of the 14 lakh established pregancies 1.5 lakh undergo abortion. The Dept is planning women-friendly campaigns for HIV/AIDS, diabetes, hypertension and menopause. The officials consider promoting male sterilisation because it is cost-effective, simple and a quicker. The mortality is almost nil and doctors can perform several vasectomies in one day. However the department will not be able to promote vasectomies unless they break the myths about the procedure. Doctors campaigning for the no scalpel vasectomy say they find it difficult to convince people to hear about the procedure. Some men think they will lose their strength or will have to keep away from work if they undergo sterilization they believe men will lose their virility if they are operated upon. The directorate is promoting men who underwent the operation a decade ago and this has significantly increased the number of vasectomies.      December 24, 2003   NewIndpress.com

India Considers Childbirth Bill to Curb Population.   India is considering a bill to limit members of Parliament and state legislatures to having two children in an effort to curb skyrocketing population. India's population is expected to surpass China's by 2050. Six Indian states have laws mandating a two-child norm for members of village councils. Opponents argue that increasing education and work opportunities for women, as well as improving health care and offering a variety of contraceptives, have proven to be the most effective ways of limiting population growth. Enforcement of a two-child law could lead to an increase in female abortions. Everyone wants two children, but most also want a son.      November 20, 2003   UnWire

India Sex Survey Arouses Emotions.   For a country that has the Kama Sutra and ancient erotic temple carvings, India is surprisingly prudish about sex. India Today has offended the public by carrying explicit material that introduced a group of 14-year-olds to new concepts such a G-spot and having sex in front of a mirror. The teenagers agree it can benefit them if there is openness about sex, but parents are less amused as young children had a chance to see it before their parents. People in India are conservative and offended by what they see and sex doesn't sell. Parents say they don't know how to deal with a magazine when it carries explicit pictures.      October 13, 2003   BBC News

Contraception Still a Big Question.   A survey of 162 upwardly mobile young couples in Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata and Delhi, has found that in 70% of couples, it is the husbands who take the decision on contraceptive methods. Only 1% take the decision as a couple.      October 12, 2003   Express

India: Birth Control Goes Herbal.   Indian scientists are developing the first effective and safe herbal contraceptive pill from a 2,500-year-old medical text. The ingredients are false pepper (embelia ribes) and long pepper (piper longum) mixed with borax. It is to undergo trials on humans, and could be on the market in two to three years. In the ancient world, Europeans used herbal contraceptives. One, a plant, silphium, was over-harvested and became extinct. In its modern form, the herbal contraceptive (pippalyadi yoga) would be taken as a daily pill for three weeks each month to inhibit ovulation. Dozens of plants are mentioned in India's ancient medical texts as preventing pregnancy, including Chinese hibiscus (hibiscus rosa sinensis), a small tree native to southern India. Developing an effective and safe herbal female contraceptive would be a coup for India. With a population in excess of one billion, only 2% of females use the modern contraceptive pill. No natural birth-control products have met the standards in clinical trials and herbal products can also have harmful side-effects. Chinese scientists developed a male contraceptive pill based on the seed of the cotton plant, trials showed it lowered men's sperm but also diminished libido.      September 28, 2003   London Sunday Telegraph

Contraceptive Knowledge, Practices and Utilization of Services in the Rural Areas of India.   In the rural areas of India, contraceptive prevalence is found to be 45.2%, of which 34.2% had used a permanent method. There is no concept of using family planning for postponing the first conception after marriage or spacing child births. A majority of women (70.5%) use a family planning only after completing their desired family size.      August 25, 2003   bioline.org.br

Coke Adds Life? In India, Impoverished Farmers are Fighting to Stop Drinks Giant 'Destroying Livelihoods'.   Before the Coca-Cola bottling company built a 40-acre bottling plant in Palakkad, Kerala, a farmers plot of land yielded 50 sacks of rice and 1,500 coconuts a year, providing work for dozens of labourers. After the plant was operation, only five sacks of rice could be extracted from the land, and only 200 coconuts. The Coca-Cola factory extracts up to 1.5 million litres of water (enough to meet the minimum requirements of about 20,000 people). Those worst a day from the deep wells it has drilled into the aquifer to produce Coke, Fanta, Sprite and a drink called Thumbs-Up. The plant produces mineral water that the locals cannot afford - they have to walk up to six miles twice a day for water. Their wells now hold only turbid, brackish water too high in dissolved salts to be healthy to drink, cook with or even wash in. Most of the locals are classed by the Indian government as "primitive tribals". In addition to the farmers, 10,000 landless labourers are also affected, having lost their jobs. For over a year the factory has been picketed daily and there have been street demonstrations and rallies. The local council has revoked the factory's licence to operate, losing nearly half of its annual income from the decision, but the next level of government suspended the revocation. Coke denies the allegation, saying the local villages receive tankers of free water supplies each day from the plant and that the real culprit is a reduction in rainfall. A local human rights and development organisation says meteorological reports show rainfall rose between 2000 and 2001. Additionally, protesters say, chemical effluents produced by bottle-washing contaminate the groundwater; and the slurry from the effluents, when dried and marketed it as fertiliser, resulted in farmers developing sores on their skin the death of their coconut palms.   July 27, 2003   London Independent

India: New Delhi to Harvest Rain.   Thousands of unauthorized wells in New Delhi have caused groundwater levels to drop alarmingly. But a solution may be to collect monsoon rains and pipe them underground to recharge depleted aquifers. The inexpensive technique has been successfully applied in five pilot projects. The water authority estimates daily demand at 850 million gallons, yet the system delivers 650 million gallons, of which 12% comes from groundwater. To government has installed hundreds of hand pumps, but most have gone dry due dropping water levels. Government officials promise relief, with the completion of a new dam and treatment facility. But the city adds 500,000 people year, improvements will be outstripped by demand and groundwater supplies will be depleted by 2020. People have long collected the monsoon rains, archaeologists have unearthed colection structures dating to the third millennium B.C. Modern rainwater harvesting involves channeling water from rooftops or storm drains into sand-lined underground boxes called "soak pits." Water that would otherwise run off then percolates through the soil, replenishing natural aquifers several hundred feet below the surface. The project has been so successful that in affluent Panchshila Parkthat the water table has risen three feet in less than a year.      April 27, 2003   Washington Post

3 Tykes and You're Out; in a Bid to Curb Population Explosion, New Delhi May Set Example by Barring Those with Many Kids From Elections.   The Indian government is planning legislation banning politicians with more than two children from contesting elections. The opposition lawmaker Laloo Prasad Yadav has nine children, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has an adopted daughter, and opposition leader Sonia Gandhi has two children. The proposal wants the ruling class to set an example. India's population is growing at 2%. The ruling will need the support of all parties in the House. A variant was introduced at local government level in some states but it is unclear if it serves the purpose. Disqualifying people from the democratic process will not make much difference to the family-planning programmes that India started in the 1950s. Adoption of a small family norm has social consequences but should be voluntary. There has to be an environment where a small family is accepted as normal but this has not materialised because of poverty, illiteracy, inequality and lack of proper health facilities.      April 11, 2003  

India's Home Minister Says Government Shocked Over Growing Numbers of Female Fetuses Aborted.   The government of India said that because of the preference for sons, the practice of aborting female fetuses is growing. It has been illegal for more than 100 years but census reports and activists say that data shows some 20 million to 40 million girls were aborted or killed in infancy. The laws against misuse of the ultrasound technology to determine pre-natal sex have been strengthened. A plan for a National Register of Citizens, with identity cards for all of India's 1.05 billion people may help, as no woman would be able to get such tests without identifying herself, and the results tracked.      January 03, 2003   Aetna Intelihealth.com

Planning for Growth in India.   India will be the fourth largest economy in 2020, and if the country sustains a GDP growth of 8.5-9% over the next 18 years and a population growth rate of 1.6%, it will join the upper middle income countries and may be ahead of China. The per capita income is expected to quadruple by '20, and the number below the poverty line is expected to halve to 13%. India would add 300 million to the population of 1,330 million by the end of the second decade. Birth rate may slow down, thus the under-15 population would be the same as today. During the same period the number of people over 60 will double to 120m. The age group 15 to 64 years will see a 46% expansion and be 66% of the population. The work force would increase by 160-170 million, and the country would need 160-200 million additional jobs. While agriculture may decline to 40%, the small scale sector will play a role in creating jobs. Urban population will rise to 40% and is likely to centre around 60-70 large cities. Ownership of computers to rise to 52 per 1,000 people and fixed line telephones to 203 per 1,000 people. The country would augment its roads and highways. Total demand for power to increase by 3.5 times or more and the demand for oil and gas will triple. Water could require more efficient use of resources, as demand for water will rise between 20% and 40%. Another Green Revolution will be spurred by rising agricultural productivity and diversification into value added crops.      December 09, 2002   India Times

India Has 260 Million People Below Poverty Line.   India has 260 million poor people but the number has decreased even as the population has multiplied said India's Minister of Urban Development and Poverty Alleviation. 260.25 million people earned less than one US dollar a day and could not afford two meals a day. But it is a marked decrease from 1993- 94, when 320 million people were below the poverty line. Uttar Pradesh, has the biggest proportion of poor people, nearly 53 million, and its position among the states and union territories has not changed in 30 years. Among the most prosperous is Gujarat, with only 6.7 million poor people.      December 2002   Xinhua General News Service

India: Balloon Adventurer Piccard Promoting Health Issues.   This was the first time Bertrand Piccard stopped here on his mission to generate awareness about health issues among the poor youth and underprivileged. The world-famous adventurer met around 500 youth in northern India on Tuesday and said he was impressed by their zest for fulfilling dreams. They have understood the importance of educating girls and the benefits of women's empowerment. Piccard will gather information about various UNFPA projects in western state of Maharashtra and will mobilise funds from Switzerland, to focus on making adolescents aware of health issues and dangers of disease like AIDS.      October 2002   The Press Trust of India

India: Family Planning Programme Successes and Failures.   In 1951, India was the first country in the world to start an official family planning programme. But some of the countries in South East Asia such as Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand, which started their family planning programmes two decades after India did, have been more successful than India in reducing the birth rate. From 1901-11 to 1941-51 India was in the first stage of demographic transition - both the birth and death rates were high, and population growth rate was a little below 1%. From 1950 to 1988 India was in the 2nd stage of demographic transistion - the death rate fell rapidly, while the birth rate continued to be high or declined only slowly. The average annual population growth rate was 2% or even higher. This was true despite the increase in the use of family planning by couples from 10% to over 37% and despite considerable investment in family planning programs by the government. In contrast, South Korea's birth rate declined sharply from 43 per 1000 in 1960 to 16.5 in 1988. The first Area Project (India Population Project - I) was implemented during 1973-80 in the five (now seven) districts of Bangalore and six districts in Uttar Pradesh. The Area Projects have contributed immensely to the strengthening of the infrastructure of the health and family planning programmes. The birth rate has declined from 41.7 per thousand population during 1951-61 to 26.1 in 1999, the death rate from 25 to 8.7, the infant mortality rate from 146 to 70 and the child mortality (0-4 years) rate from 57.3 to 23. The expectation of life at birth has increased from 36.7 years in 1951 to 64.6 years in 2000. Under the family planning programme, millions of sterilisations have been conducted, IUDs inserted and condoms and oral pills distributed. In 1997-98, 45.5% of all couples were covered by effective family planning methods. Despite all of this effort and success, India's birth rate is not coming down to expectations. In the early 1960's officials started thinking in terms of "the objective of stabilising the growth of population over a reasonable period" and family planning targets were set for various states. The family planning targets have been discontinued from 1996-97 because of the tyranny created by them. But the demographic goals remain. In original demographic goal was to reduce the birth rate to 25 by 1973. But the goal was never met, and every time a demographic goal was set, it was either revised upwards or deferred to be achieved at a later date. The 'National Population Policy 2000' has set the demographic goal of reducing the total fertility rate from 3.6 in 1991 to replacement level (2.1) by 2010. It is hoped that this goal would be achieved by the due date.   July 11, 2002   Deccan Herald

And From the India Times, a Similar Theme: .   No Representation Without Sterilisation. Does democracy mean representation of the people, or representation of condoms? Democracy is about giving a voice to every citizen, not about population control. A state can be rewarded for killing off most of its babies through neglect. The highest ever birth rate for the country was 48.1 per thousand in the decade 1911-21l, yet population actually declined by 0.4% because of mass deaths caused by Asian Flu. The freezing of Lok Sabha seats penalises the poor, in the most backward states with the worst facilities. They have the largest families, not because they are stupid, but with high infant mortality, it makes sense to have many children. Dozens of developing countries have reduced their fertility rates without force or penalties, and this is true even of dirt-poor country like Bangladesh   2002  

Challenges Ahead for Women.   Gender Budgeting is the most viable option to achieve economic growth comparable to that of China, said Prof. Swaminathan, Business Editor, The Hindu. There was a need for specific earmarking of funds in the department of Government spending for women. Every woman should realise the importance of self-reliance and prove her competence and strength, said Dr. Vasanthi Vasudevan, Schoolnetindia.com. Education for women should focus on building life skills. Successful mirocredit programs and women Panchayat members are evidence that womens empowerment is working. However, infanticide, neglect of the girl child, teenage pregnancies, and poor maternal care have led to an imbalance in the male to female ratio.   March 19, 2001   The Hindu

Women Campaign Against Birth Control Injections.   Women's rights groups in India are pressing the government to give its up plans to use contraceptive injections, such as Depo-Provera, and other "synthetic, steroidal female hormones" as part of the national birth control program, which they say is becoming coercive. Injections have already been approved for use in the country's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh. The women's groups, including communist party affiliate, All-India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA), allege the injections have harmful side-effects, including premature menopause, atrophy of the ovaries, sterility death from spontaneous blood clots, susceptibility to HIV-infection, Down's Syndrome in offspring, cervical cancer, and interfering with the reproductive health of progeny. They say foreign drug companies are pushing the contraceptive injections without proper certification for safety. The introduction of Depo-Provera into India has been stalled by the Supreme Court on the grounds that there was insufficient research on its suitability for Indian conditions. These long-acting contraceptives require proper counselling and follow-up, which would be lacking in India's poorly managed and ill-equipped health delivery services. While India's new National Population Policy speaks of a "target-free and non-disincentive regime" in birth control, several states have been allowed to negotiate direct funding for birth control from international agencies, which have laid down conditions that go against the national policy. The western Maharashtra state will cut subsidized food quotas for children of the poor with large families. Uttar Pradesh, central Madhya Pradesh and western Rajasthan states now link availability of benefits to family size. Delhi and Haryana bar candidates with more than two children from local body elections. 42 million women in India need protection against unwanted pregnancies. Depo-Provera is administered once every three months, but can block contraception for a year or more after the last injection.   October 17, 2000   InterPress Service

In Mission Mode - Try to Prove Demographers Wrong .   The prime minister constituted a national mission comprising around 140 members to come up with effective measures to check the population on May 11, 2000, the same day that India crossed the billion mark. The population could possibly stabilize at 1.6 billion around 2050, giving India the largest population and the highest number of illiterates in the world. Even if the population stabilizes by 2045, which is the goal of India's National Population Commission, will it be possible even to meet basic needs like food, shelter, clothing, drinking water, education and health amenities? India's goal should be to achieve zero population growth by 2015, making population a top national priority. All political parties, social scientists, youth, college students, teachers, women's organisations, trade unions and voluntary agencies should be involved in the project. In the last 100 years, the world population has increase by a factor of three, while in India it has increased by ten times. Illiteracy, ignorance, poverty, poor health, high mortality rate, superstition, traditions, greed for power and lack of political will have all caused major setbacks to family planning programmes in the country. Excesses during the Emergency and the subsequent apathy have further aggravated the problem. Education, health, nutrition and family planning programmes must be integrated and maternal and infant mortality rates must be brought down. Credit should be given only to those families who accept the two child norm. Because female literacy is low, more grants should be given to schools on the basis of the number of girl students. More emphasis should be given to vasectomy (male sterilisation). 97% of sterilizations are female. Illegal child marriages should be stopped and late marriages encouraged. Family planning should be implemented by all family doctors, not just by government. Radio, television, folk art and the print media should emphasize that a small family is beneficial to an individual's own well-being rather than focusing on population control for the national good. Youth from colleges and universities and sarpanchs (heads of gram panchayats), should be actively involved in the programme of population management. While Kerala has always been streaks ahead of other states, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka have done exceptionally well in family planning. A combination of literacy, awareness creation, innovative schemes for school enrolment and health care have together brought population growth rates down. If we can replicate this in the northern states, we will have created history   September 12, 2000   Times of India

India Not to Use "Coercive" Methods to Control Its Population .   In reply to a suggestion that a law be enacted to bar people who have more than two children from standing for parliamentary and state legislative seats, the Health Minister of India, C.P. Thakur, told parliament that the government will use "persuasive methods" rather than coercive to encourage parents to have small families. Although India became one of the first nations in the region to adopt a family planning program, in 1951, the program got off to a sluggish start, picked up speed in the 1960s, but taking a dive, in the 1975-77 years when then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed emergency rule, with sterlisation camps and forced vasectomies. India has now abolished targets for family planning service providers and switched to programmes within the larger context of reproductive health care   August 21, 2000   Deutsche Presse-Agentur

Marking World Population Day, UN Highlights India's Adverse Sex Ratio .   A UN Population Fund's (UNFPA) representative in India says that, although progress has been made in promoting family planning and reproductive health, overall population trends show the country is hardly a role model: India's greater number of males would indicate discrimination against women, from depriving girls of food, education and health services to killing of female babies and fetuses. There are 1069 males for every 1000 females, compared with 1049 in Bangladesh, 1072 in Pakistan and 1081 in China. The world average is 1015 males for every 1000 females. While illegal, ultrasound is being used to determine the sex of the child and, in prosperous northern states, female fetuses are sometimes aborted. The result is a higher sex imbalance in the north. India's population has grown by 1.64% in each of the last five years, a rate that is lower than Pakistan's, Nepal's, Bangladesh's and most of sub-Saharan Africa, but higher than the world average of 1.33%. After seven years of languishing, a draft Population Policy was adopted in February. Most states of India have their own population policies. India has made progress in increasing the number of medically supervised births, boosting the use of contraceptives, lowering infant mortality and enrolling girls in primary schools. But little progress has been made in reducing maternal mortality and increasing literacy among adult females   July 13, 2000   Earthtimes

Bombay Population Projected to Hit 27m by 2015 .   Bombay's substandard housing is putting people at risk, said a city official following the death of 50 people in a mudslide. The population of Bombay, India's largest city, will almost double to more than 27 million people by 2015, according to UN projections released recently. Migrants are drawn by financial and entertainment industries, overtaxing the ability of the aging city's infrastructure to cope with increasing demands for water, health, housing, transport and education. More than half of Bombay residents sleep on the sidewalks or in cramped brick and tin huts lining the streets. During the monsoon shanties built alongside high-rise buildings are flooded with filthy water from choked drains. 60% of Bombay residents are eligible for family planning programs, but people fail to understand the situation due to high illiteracy rates, and high infant mortality rates means that people aren't interested in limiting the number of children they lose so many at a young age. "People come here to work because in Bombay they can do any odd job anywhere and their stomach can be filled," said one midwife. "But in a few years, there will not be any place to walk on the streets, there will be so many people and huts". The World Bank is assisting a population project in the states of Assam, Rajasthan and Karnataka   July 12, 2000   Mumbai Indian Express

50 Years From Now, It'll Be a Grey India .   By 2051, only 19% of the country's population would be up to the age of 14 years. Currently this group constitutes almost 38% of the population. The median age will rise by 17 years from 21 years now to 38 years in 2051. Couples are opting for one child, or at the most two - and with advancement in health services, will experience an increased life expectancy. According to the Population Foundation of India, a voluntary organisation working in association with the Union government, about 15% of the population will be over the age of 65 by 2051. By then, India will have an evened out sex ratio, which was 108 males per 100 females in 1991. The total fertility rate - number of children per woman) in India would is expected to come down to 2.52 between 2011 and 2016, and is expected to reach 2.1 in 2026. [Note: click here for more information on greying populations]   July 03, 2000   Times Of India

A Dramatic Decline Needless Alarm Over Population .   India is not China. As the world's largest democracy, we have some constraints. We can't adopt draconian measures. Sanjay Gandhi tried to innovate. That cost his mother her power and the country a perfectly innocuous term, called family planning. The expression continues to be taboo even today, reflecting a part of our psyche. Can well-intended proposals like that put forward by Dr J V Narlikar for reducing the number of parliamentary seats in the states which have not been able to check their population, be rammed down the throats of those who make up nearly half of India? Prof R D Karve, the pioneer of India's birth control movement, said "No one will practise birth-control to meet the danger of growth in population. People will practise it for their individual good". People will resort to family planning if they perceive it to be safe, if they think it satisfying, if they consider it beneficial to themselves. In Andhra Pradesh fertility has declined sharply despite the fact that the female literacy is among the lowest in the country and the per capita income in AP was also lower than the national average. Today in India, both in the urban and rural parts of every state without exception, birth rates are declining, though in varying degrees. The rate at which people are choosing to have smaller families is faster than the pace at which the death rate is decreasing. We are moving towards a fertility replacement level as opposed to towards population disaster   July 01, 2000   eMagazine

India, Africa Keys to World Population Growth.   Trends in India, Africa, and Europe will be important in determining how fast the world's population grows. India may add a second billion people in another 100 years, according to a report by the Population Reference Bureau. If the Indian government is successful in boosting literacy rates and sexual education among females, the population growth will decrease faster. Africa has 13% of the world's population, and 69% of the world's HIV or AIDS cases. Still, the population of the African continent is expected to rise from 800 million now to 1.8 billion in 2050, because the fertility rate of 38 births per 1,000 people is still much higher than the mortality rate of 14 deaths per 1,000. Also, 43% of the continent's population is under age 15. Europe's population is expected to decrease from 728 million now to 658 million by 2050, due to declining birth rates. The U.S. population is expected to rise from 275 million now to 403 million by 2050, due to an overall positive economic forecast and continued immigration.   June 08, 2000   Environmental News Network

Centre to Evolve Effective Programmes for Improving the Quality of R.C.H. Services in UP, MP, Bihar and Rajasthan .   The Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare Dr. C. P. Thakur has stressed the need for stabilization of population which is the precise aim of The National Population Policy. In his inagural address, he said that the foremost task of his Ministry would be to consolidate and sustain the gains already achieved in a large number of states and to evolve and implement viable and effective programmes for improving the quality of reproductive health services in the poor performing states of UP, MP, Bihar and Rajasthan. A new project funded by the World Bank will strengthen routine immunization in the these states along with continuing the drive against polio during the current year. Steps are needed to improve newborn care and an integrated approach to management of childhood illness. The Population Policy has rightly emphasized the supreme importance of harnessing the power of women in the cause of health   June 01, 2000   Press Release - Government of India

Worries, Not Celebration, as India Hits a Billion .   As far back as 1952, India was among the first countries to launch a state-sponsored family planning program when its rapidly growing population was about 360 million. Since then the population has almost tripled. At its current rate of 1.91% (15.5 million people a year) is double that of China's, and India could overtake China by 2045 as world's most populous country, according to Population Foundation executive director K. Srinivasan. "While the global population has increased threefold during this (20th) century, from 2 billion to 6 billion, the population of India has increased nearly five times from 238 million to 1 billion", according to a government report. India failed to rein in its population because of a disastrous experiment with forced sterilization during the two-year emergency rule in the 1970s when then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi suspended civil rights. Demographer Ashish Bose said that "Forced sterilizations did permanent damage to the family planning policy. As a result, family planning became a dirty word in India." The policy also failed because it was too target-oriented and because sharp declines in death rates were not accompanied by a similar drop in birth rates. Most family planning in India equates to female sterilization, the result of target fulfilling. This year the government announced a new population policy not bound by numerical targets but offering incentives for two-children families and for delaying marriage, and aims to bring fertility rates down to replacement levels by 2010 and achieve what it calls a stable population by 2045. This follows an earlier shift in emphasis from demographic control to health care and education of women, but in India, men continue to determine reproductive choices. With the new policy, the focus is on the role and responsibility of men. Although India has cut its fertility rate to 3.3 children per woman from six in 1951, and the birth rate has declined to 26.4 from 40.8 per 1,000, the UNFPA warns that the alarming growth levels are putting intense stress on the country's already creaking infrastructure and stretching food. About half of India's adults are illiterate, a third live below the poverty line and more than 15 percent of children under the age of 15 suffer from malnutrition   May 10, 2000   Reuters

Indian Population Clock Stops Short of One Billion .   A population clock in the heart of the Indian capital has stopped ticking just days before it was set to cross the one-billion mark. A new clock in in the works, hopefully before India's billionth citizen is predicted to be born at 12.56 p.m on May 11. Set up on a billboard by the UNFPA at a busy road crossing, the digital counter is supposed to serve as a reminder of the need to control population growth   May 10, 2000   Reuters

People of India Parch, Perish in Severe Drought .   Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee sought to mitigate human suffering arising from one of the worst droughts to hit the country. An estimated 50 million people and over 100 million head of livestock are suffering from thirst and hunger. Crops have failed for the second consecutive year. Water sources in the traditionally dry central and western regions are severely depleted. In Gujarat, police had to open fire on people rioting for drinking water. More than 1,000 women, carrying empty vessels on their heads, laid siege to a district office. In Orissa, villagers in the worst affected areas have migrated to neighbouring states looking for work. The dryland regions constitute nearly 70% of the country's cultivable lands. Monsoon rains are being called "normal" for 12 years in a row, but failure of rains in certain pockets and the continuing dry spell had simply gone unreported. The ground water level in some regions has dipped as low as 1,200 feet below the surface. However, a number of oases still dot the scorched landscape: the villages where the natural resources have been by the communities using simple and effective methods like a series of small water storage tanks, recharging of village wells whose water percolates into the ground and replenished the underground reservoir for drinking and irrigation. The government has a sufficient food grain stock of 26 million tonnes and a massive relief operation has been launched to combat the disaster. Food, fodder and water is being moved to the affected areas   May 10, 2000   Reuters

Fall in Fertility Rate Among Andhra Pradesh Women Puzzling .   The new population policy announced by the Union cabinet has a special focus on health and education to achieve a stable population by 2045, and includes freezing of the number of seats in the Lok Sabha at the current level of 543 - which is based on the 1971 census - till 2026, rather than 2001, as origianlly planned. Not known is whether the number of seats allocated for each state can be reallocated per changes in population size. The action plan will have the following main features: self-help groups (mostly housewives) at village and panchayat levels who will interact with health care workers and gram panchayats; elementary education to be made free and compulsory; registration of marriage and pregnancy, births and deaths to be made compulsory. For routine delivery cases, maternity huts will be provided in villages. For complicated cases the policy proposes soft loans to start ambulatory services. Couples below the poverty line who undergo sterilisation after two children will be eligible for health insurance plan. Also for couples below the poverty line who marry at the legal age of 21. Cash incentive at the birth of a girl child as also to mothers who have their first child after the age of 19   March 14, 2000   The Hindu

The Family Way .   Have successive governments really made the paradigm shift from a number-oriented to a people-friendly approach to population as articulated at the landmark Cairo conference in 1994? Even though the Vajpayee government has laid to rest many apprehensions with its new national population policy, vestiges of the earlier mindset remain. The government is seeking to postpone the population-based delimitation of Lok Sabha seats for another 25 years, to avoid sending the wrong signals to states which have lagged in taking measures to reduce fertility levels, hoping that the glaring disparities in fertility management between the large, populous northern states and their more successful southern counterparts will be narrowed, after which delimitation can be debated. The positive side of the new policy states that health insurance will be provided to those below the poverty line who undergo sterilisation after having two children. But studies show that even the most backward and illiterate people are acutely aware of the need to limit their families so that their children can get the best possible quality of life. What these people really need is access to quality health care, education and a choice of contraceptive methods. There is a reward for women who marry after 21 and opt for a terminal method of contraception after the second child. But most women have little say in the matter. There needs to be greater male involvement in planned parenthood, and more male workers need to be brought into the health service delivery systems. In addition, one third of India's population will soon enter child-bearing age, and even if they limit to two children per family, to expect the new policy to bring about any dramatic decline in population growth anytime soon would be unrealistic. The challenge will be to persevere with non-coercive policies in the face of increasing numbers until replacement fertility levels are reached.
A similar article from Economic Times (India) says that the government decision once again takes the focus away from overall health and social facilities to women, including sustained nutritional norms for both mother and child, and lowering the infant mortality rate. And another article from Economic Times (India) says that in freezing the Lok Sabha seats for the next twenty five years is aking to freezing democracy. This move would have been a solution to the problem if the backward states had deliberately gone slow on population control in order to gain more seats in Parliament. But the performance of these states in other fields has been very much better. The imbalances that now exist will multiply. Since the current delimitation of constituencies was based on the the 1971 census, by the time the delimination is reestablished, the constituencies will be based on population statistics that are over half a century old.
  February 17, 2000   Times of India

India Defends New Population Policy .   A new program offers incentives to couples having no more than two children. "There will be no coercion, no force," said the head of the government's family welfare department. The program was cleared by the cabinet on Tuesday. In the late seventies doctors who received financial incentives to perform vasectomies and often forced men to have the surgery. The government hopes the fertility rate will come down to two per couple by 2010, and reach a stable population by 2045. To do that, 30% of the contraceptive needs must be met within 4 to 6 years, and the government will need 60 billion rupees (1.4 billion dollars) in the next two years to implement the policy. "There has been a paradigm shift in the policy. There will be an integerated service delivery system by way of self-help groups which will cover all the villages," said A.R. Nanda, the head of the government's family welfare department. The government plans to give priority to demographically backward states such as northern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan and Haryana. Uttar Pradesh alone has 156.9 million people, more than the world's 5th most populous nation. India's population grows by 30 a minute, 1,815 per hour, 1.3 million per month and 15.7 million a year   February 17, 2000   Agence France Presse

Conference on Dowry, Bride-burning, and Son-preference .   January 27-30, 2001, New Delhi, India. The purpose of the Conference will be to research into the evils of dowry, atrocities on women, bride-burning and son-preference in India and people of Indian origin abroad, recommend plans & programs to eradicate these inhuman practices, and present a "Work-Plan" to the Government of India for implementation of the said plans & programs. Dr. Werner F. Menski, Ph.D. or Himendra Thakur   February 16, 2000   ABC News

India: Women Prefer Sterilization .   In rural South India, women who have given birth to what they consider a satisfactory number of children, find that sterilization gives a woman the status of seniority in her community, according to a study by Saavala published in Studies In Family Planning. Sterilization is the most commonly used form of contraception in India. In 1992-93, 27% of married Indian women between the ages of 13 and 49 were sterilized. The numbers are higher in South India. For example, in the Gopalapalli district, 44% of married women younger than 50 were sterilized   February 16, 2000   UN Wire

Indian Cabinet Approves Sweeping Proposals to Check Population Boom .   The Indian cabinet Tuesday approved a proposal to offer incentives for couples with two children and freezing the number of seats in parliament until 2026. Incentives include a family welfare-linked health insurance scheme for couples who undergo sterilisation after two children and "rewards" for couples with earnings less than a dollar a day, who marry after the legal age of 21 and have two children. The immediate objective is to meet the urgent needs of popularising contraception and creating health care infrastructure. The medium term objectives were to bring the fertility rate to two children per couple by 2010 and thereby achieve a stable population by 2045. In the developing world, India was the first to initiate a government family planning program - in 1952. Consequently the fertility rate has been cut from six births per woman in 1947 to the current 3.5 births. But the declining death rate has caused India to grow by two% a year since the 1960s, and the population has almost tripled from the independence-era figure of 350 million   February 16, 2000   Agence France Presse

Reforms Could Lift India Growth Rates .   The World Bank said that determined implementation of a second generation of reforms could lift India's growth rate to 7.5% or more, but growth could slip below 5.8% if the reform plans stall. It urged the government of India to spend more on education and health care and to reduce subsidies and speed privatization. "Concerted action is needed to lift the more than 300 million poor...out of poverty." India borrows $2 billion a year to improve social infrastructure, but poverty reduction has been sluggish   February 16, 2000   Reuters

Taking Stock of the Population Time Bomb .   Food requirements and health measures will be among the major challenges facing India as its population crosses the one-billion mark on May 11 this year. 17 million people are being added each year, according to the Population Foundation of India. The population is expected to stabilise in many states around 2026 but several states are projected to show a declining trend much later around 2051. By then India will have reached 1.646 billion, almost double the 1991 population of 846 million. States like UP, Bihar, MP, Rajasthan, Assam, Haryana and Orissa need to make special efforts to stabilise their population. Tamil Nadu, Punjab and AP. West Bengal, Gujarat, Orissa, Haryana, Karnataka, Assam and Maharashtra (in that order) are expected to soon enter a period of declining growth. MP, Bihar and Rajasthan are expected to see population growth even beyond 2051 while UP is projected to be the worst performing state with the highest population growth even in 2051. According to the UNFPA, the eventual lack of water for irrigation could cut India's grain production by 25%   February 15, 2000   Times of India

Whither Family Planning Programmes? .   As India's population approches the one-billion mark, and is likely to double during the next 37 years, policy planners are still debating on strategies to stabilise the alarming growth rate. "However, we have a broader population policy on the anvil which will be holistic without losing focus of the interventions in terms of reproductive health, safe motherhood and survival of infant and mother and at the same time taking into account the concerns of HIV/AIDS and sexually-transmitted infections," says A R Nanda, secretary, department of Health and Family Welfare. After introduction of the target-free-approach in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh has proved disappointing with contraceptive acceptance levels at 50% of the levels at the time when targets were in use. The "birth- based-approach" is suggested, where pregnant women and recently delivered mothers, will be offered contraceptive services geared to meet the needs of spacing and family limitations. There should be a shift from the achievement of national fertility reduction goals to the coverage and quality of maternal and child health care services and responsiveness to consumer demand. Building up of self-help groups, and offering a whole package with literacy as the end result and stepping up of social marketing of contraceptives are urgent needs   February 14, 2000   Times of India

Rise in Population Hampers Economic Growth .   The need of the hour is to strike proper balance between population growth and better economic development, said state finance minister Harish Chandra Gupta said at a two-day national seminar on population and economic developments. Chief speaker, Prof AK Sengupta, director, Population Research Centre stated that population policy should cater to the needs of urban areas but also to the needs of the rural folks. In the absence of adequate health facilities, lack of massive investments and inadequate infrastructures facilities prove a hindrance to economic development   February 07, 2000   Times of India

In India, South Points the Way .   Certain states of southern India - Goa and Kerala, and Tamil Nadu, shown what can be accomplished, and prosperity, education and balance have come about through rational and humane means of population control. Kerala has a birth rate 2.4 per family. 85% of the girls, even from the villages, can read and write. The state has all of India's Nobel prizes, the first woman Indian Supreme Court justice, the first female head of the stock market, and the first surgeon general. Kerala has the lowest rates of female infanticide in India, with 10 women to 7 men. States like Kerala are matriarchal societies, where the mother's family line rules and where the values are more those of succor, as opposed to the still supermacho, patriarchal, warring societies of the north. Both communist and Christian political leaders in the south were willing to systematically do the day-after-day work of educating girls, of providing contraceptive advice and of helping them see a future beyond the horizon. "Ask a woman in [the northern state of] Bihar if she wants more children, and she will say no. Ask her if she is using birth control, and she will also say no." One reason for the resistance to family planning today dates back to the mid-l970s, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and then her son, Sanjay, began a forced-sterilization program that left the country in shock. Now if only anyone in the north would pay attention and follow the example of the southern states   February 02, 2000   Tulsa World

Urban-rural Divide in India Will Blur in New Millennium .   India is likely to have the highest number of cities in the world. The 2001 census is expected to show 35 metropolises, up from the 23 quoted in the 1991 census. The number would go up to 45-50 by the year 2016, according to the Centre for Symbiosis of Technology, Environment and Management (STEM). By 2010, 1/3 of the population will be urban. Swift population movements between the low-order and high-order settlements, the increased tendencies of urban and metropolitan sprawl, the merger of rural fringe and edge areas with the expanding metropolises and larger cities may result in the formation of more slums. An estimated five-six crore of urbanites reside in the slums and it is likely to reach 10 to 12 crore by 2000 and may cross the 15 crore mark by the year 2016   December 29, 1999   India Today

Friends of the Pill .   Last week India marked 50 years of family planning services. But still, 60% of married women in India between the ages of 15 and 45 use no contraception. Those who do mainly opt for sterilization. Only 2.4% use condoms, 2% use intrauterine devices and 1.2% use oral contraceptive pills. Myths and fear of side effects are the reasons women don't want to use the pill. 'Goli ke hamjoli', friends of the pill, is a project to encourage the use of pills as a safe, modern and effective contraceptive method   December 17, 1999   NDTV- New Delhi Television

India's Population Surging .   While 72,000 babies are born in India every day, Parliament is debating legislation that prohibits politicians with more than two children from running for office. Hundreds of lawmakers in the 543-seat Parliament have more than two children. Dozens have between six and nine kids. Female lawmakers would be affected because wives rarely have a say in the number of children they will have. Part of the resistence is due to the fact that, in the 1970s, many Indians were forced to undergo operations or were sterilized without their knowledge. In local elections, five states have implemented the two-child norm.   December 14, 1999   Associated Press

India's Demographic Frontier .   Government programs to manage the population, especially in the cities, where the slums are a dispiriting sink of pollution, squalor, and disease, have not been successful. In the 1970's, vasectomies were forced upon men. A coercive two-child policy was enforced. India dropped birth-control quotas in 1966 in favor of a more holistic approach to reproductive health care, but government efforts at family planning are still suspect. Also, women are very low status in India, having a 63% illiteracy rate. Girl children are often abandoned as infants. Women can be banished from their homes for failing to produce sons. India, the world's largest democracy, is also the most chaotic democracy. Under the most optimistic projections, India will not stabilize its population until it nearly doubles, at 1.8 billion. Kerala, on the other hand, has a 90% female literacy rate, health care is free, and infant mortality rates are 12 per 1,000, compared with 85 per 1,000 in Uttar Pradesh. Kerala reached zero population growth 15 years before the target date set by the UN. Kerala has mandatory education and a bustling economy of rubber, cashews, coir, and, increasingly, tourism. The rest of India boasts of its numbers, "100 Crore strong," against Pakistan. But Mohandas Gandhi said poverty is the worst form of violence. Surely the father of his country would not support creating more savagery on such a scale   December 10, 1999   Boston Globe

Include Adolescent Health in School Curriculum .   At The Conference on Adolescent Health, the near absence of adolescent health in India was discussed. Among those who made a clear distinction between "safe and selective abortion", Dr. Aggarwal said that while a woman's right to safe abortion could not questioned the trend of selective abortions could not be allowed. Nearly 90 pc of abortions in mid-pregnancy are done to prevent the birth of the girl-child.   November 30, 1999   Hindustan Times

`Hum Do Haamare Do' Reborn (we Two Our's Two) .   Nearly two decades after Parliament asked the government to prepare a national policy on population, it is finally ready. After cabinet approval, it will be placed before Parliament for it ti be adopted. The only national policy statement on population we have ever had was during the 1975-77 Emergency regime. It was a sterilisation-centred policy which was aborted a year later. The new draft policy recognizes that a population policy is a lot more than just fertility and mortality rates. Women's education, the environment, provision of basic amenities, and access to healthcare and jobs must be included. The goal is to redcue the number of children per woman down to 2.1 by 2010 - the hum do hamaare do approach. If this is done, India's population will take a further 35 years to stabilise. The method recommended is more carrot than stick, barring anyone with more than two children from becoming an MP or MLA. And, to put a similar condition for jobs in government and state-run firms. The core strategy is to integrate this goal in development strategy, including: free and compulsory primary education;

work with NGOs and private doctors to ensure wide availability of safe abortion;

compulsory registration of all pregnancies and births; full coverage of pregnant women's needs for healthcare and nutrition, as also post-birth;

full immunisation for all children against six vaccine-preventable diseases;

vocational training for all girls; involvement of the private sector and NGOs in reducing girls' dropout rates from school and in getting them jobs;

special focus on making available full and free information and facilities on health queries and contraception;

free national health insurance for children of parents who marry after the legal minimum age of marriage, and who have the first child when the mother is past 21 years and who stick to two children;

big monetary grants to zilla parishads, panchayats and municipalities for performance in these areas;

special attention to districts with poor healthcare infrastructure and statistics on maternal and child mortality rates;

utilise networks of dairy cooperatives, public distribution shops and state insurance branches to achieve some of these goals.

  November 19, 1999   The Times of India

A Lesson in Humility .   The more we are integrated into global markets, the more we are getting separated from our far flung villages. The cyclone is a result of destroying coastal mangroves and shelter belts for industrial shrimp farms which today continue to operate illegally because in 1996 the Supreme Court ordered their closure. It is a disaster resulting from the profligate ways of a fossil fuel-based industrial society and the globalisation of trade. The 'right to development' has been interpreted as the right to make, sell and use more automobiles, the right to set up more fossil fuel-based power plants, the right to promote a chemical and energy intensive agriculture, the right to set up shrimp 'factories' for the rich consumers of the North while our farmers and fishing communities are robbed of their livelihoods and food. The right to development has become the right to pollute   November 10, 1999   The Hindu

Reasons for Discontinuing and Not Intending to Use Contraception in India .   A new study based on data from India's 1992-93 National Family Health Survey shows that women discontinue using contraceptives because of problems related to methods and complete method failure as well as opposition to family planning. Until lately, India's family planning program has focused primarily on sterilization. The emphasis was on the number of sterilizations performed, so temporary contraceptive methods such as pills and condoms were never used or discontinued and family planning is generally perceived as a means of stopping childbearing rather than as a means of spacing births, even though birth spacing can be beneficial to the health of both mother and child. Only 1% or fewer women in the study mentioned accessibility or cost as their main reason for not using contraception. However, the study shows that women regularly exposed to electronic mass media are less likely to report method problems or opposition to family planning   November 04, 1999   Global Intersections

WTO: a Statement of Concern: Beware of the Snare at Seattle .   The experience of the Indian people as regards WTO over the past five year is not particularly pleasant. It had promised to raise standards of living and ensure full employment, to ensure steady growth in real income and effective demand; optimal utilisation of world resources; guarantee of a share for the developing and the least developed countries in international trade. None of these promises have so far been fulfilled, nor are there any indications that any progress has been towards these goals. On the contrary the trend is that the progress towards this goal has been thwarted by the discriminatory policies followed by several developed countries to block exports from the developing countries through anti-dumping and other related measures. Despite the ballads sung by the bards of globalisation it is seen that the imports of India have increased far more than the exports between 1994-95 to 1997-98 and the balance of payments position has worsened. The ratio of exports to imports has deteriorated. There has been no increase in the country's share of world exports; compared to 1980 the percentage has, in fact, declined   November 04, 1999   BOL

South Asia Badly Governed, Says UNDP.   The United Nations Development Program has said that South Asia, including India and Pakistan, is one of the most corrupt and poorly governed regions of the world where the ruling elite is often too powerful to be accountable. In Bangladesh, for example, the cost of corruption --of setting up business comes to 340% of the estimated initial official cost. Nuclear tests by New Delhi and Islamabad, cost $15 billion over 10 years, enough to educate, nourish and provide healthcare to more than 37 million neglected children in the region. Governments collect taxes from the poor and middle class and enrich the rich with government contracts, concessions and loans from public-sector banks. The richest 20% earn almost 40% of national income and the poorest 20% earn less than 10%. Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka -- were identified as the most corrupt in the world. If Pakistan reduced corruption to the level of Singapore, its per capita income levels would increase by as much as 50%   November 04, 1999   Times of India

US, India Sign Agreement to Reduce Pollution .   India and the U.S. will work closely with other countries to develop consensus international rules and procedures for the Kyoto mechanisms including the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). CDM would mean flow of new investments and transfer of clean and environment-friendly technology to India with an investment potential of more than $1 billion per annum   October 26, 1999   Chennai Hindu

Study Finds Wide Acceptance for 'morning After Pill' .   More than 50% surveyed in in Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and New Delhi, want the 'morning after pill' to be made available across the counter. Currently, the pill is available only through select medical practitioners and is not part of the family welfare scheme of the Government. The study was undertaken by the Population Council. Targets are being replaced with a 'better choices campaign'. Emergency contraception involves use of a higher dose of birth control pills within 72 hours of unprotected sex, followed by a second dose 12 hours later. The morning after pill only works before fertilization or implantation. The side- effects are nausea, vomiting and for some headaches, breast tenderness or fluid retention. A study in 1992-1993 showed that 78% of pregnancies in the country were unplanned and 25% were unwanted, contributing to 6.7 million induced abortions and 4 million spontaneous abortions, which result in an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 maternal deaths   October 24, 1999   The Hindu

Despite More Food, One-third of India is Hungry .   According to the UNFPA, even though food production in India has been growing, 320 million consumed less than 80% of the minimum energy requirement in 1997 requirement. Foodgrains have increased by 3.5 times, cereals by about three times and protein by 1.5 times since Independence - yet the increase in per capita availability is much less. More than 80% of the rural populations of Assam, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra consume less than this minimum daily requirement, and 50% of rural Gujarat and Tamil Nadu receive less than the minimum. 20% of cereals are distributed to livestock and about five% are used as seeds. Minimum requirement is set at 2,400 and 2,100 calories for rural and urban areas respectively. Rural land is fragmented every time it is passed from one generation to the next   October 20, 1999   Times of India

Treason, Not Reason - Six Billion and Still Growing .   By Digvijay Singh, a former Union minister for environment, and present Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, second largest state in India. On October 12, 1999 when we cross the six billion mark, we should question ourselves on whether we deserve this earth. Voting patterns show that people's priorities are based on personal economic betterment. Is there hope for those who want to vote for 'fewer' humans? In the developed countries, how many will cast their votes for equitable consumption of global resources? In the developing world, it is a hopeless case where sustenance is the only criterion. In India's current elections, no candidate expressed distress at our crossing the one billion population mark. Most politicians and leaders think that overpopulation problems can be managed by human ingenuity, intensive development programmes and education. Maharaja Krishna Rajendra Wodeyar of Mysore introduced family planning as a state policy in 1932 and India was the first nation to proclaim it as a national policy in 1950. Yet India's population growth rate has not dropped below 1.9% a year. One method that has not yet been suggested is to define unsustainable population growth as anti-national. This last resort would be to classify having more than two children as an act of sedition resulting in the loss of voting rights. As for other methods, doling out cash incentives is burdensome in a poor country; denying food subsidies, housing, jobs and other facilities is cruel towards children, who are not responsible for the population problem. The proliferation of slums and their harmful impact on the future generation is beyond calculation. Unemployment and crime are also on the rise. Only the advanced nations have attained the below one per cent annual increase mark. Do all these nations have to become the employment exchange agencies of the world and incur the expense of housing millions of non-ethnics?   October 12, 1999   India Times

6 Billion People and a Countertrend .   Literate women in India's Kerala help hold population growth nearly flat A history of Christian missionary schooling for all castes, and a progressivist communist government that since 1957 has pushed land reform and education have helped in the reduction, but mostly a self-conscious awareness of the value and role of women, and their rights within the family - even in rural areas, has helped birth rates lower. "If you have too many kids, you can't spend enough time educating them," says a young woman. In Kerala, the birth rate is about 2.4. 85% of even village girls can read and write, the highest rate in India. Compared this to Rajasthan village girls with a less than 10% literacy rate; village girls are often married at age 14, the birth rate is about six children per family. Kerala also has the lowest rates of female infanticide in India, and today women here outnumber men by a factor of roughly 10 to 7. Kerala women have provided many firsts': the first woman Indian Supreme Court justice, the first female head of the stock market, the first state chief engineer, the first surgeon general, the first female international literary figure (Arundhati Roy). In commercial centers like New Delhi and Bombay, moreover, employers advertise for Kerala women - their skill levels and independence are highly valued. Last year a Kerala Muslim girl, for the first time, scored the highest of all students on the state high school exam   October 12, 1999   Christian Scientist Monitor

And Makes 6 Billion .   Dianne Sherman, of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), said birth control accords reached during a 1994 international population conference in Cairo are working. Birthrates have dropped because women in developing countries are obtaining the information and materials they need to limit family size. Of her recent visit to India, she said "Much of our work is being done in Uttar Pradesh," a state in India with a population of about 220 million, (close to that of the United States). Uttar Pradesh is a very poor state with a rural, conservative culture. "Yet people are determined to control the size of their families." "Virtually everyone we talked to wanted no more than two children" "Reproduction is a politicized issue in India, but (birth control) enjoys tremendous support at the village level."   October 11, 1999   San Francisco Chronicle

Population Clock Has Given India a Difficult Time .   NEW DELHI India, where time often appears to stand still, is adjusting the clock. The clock showed that the nation's 1 billionth person had been born in August, which isn't due to happen until 1 p.m. on May 12. The clock was not adjusted to reflect India's declining fertility rate, due in part to the influence of AIDS, the use of more condoms, and the abortions of female fetuses due to a preference of males. The United Nations' projection program has set Jan. 12 as the date of 1 billion. The fertility rate in the poorest areas has dropped from an anticipated 4.8 children per woman to 4.0, the decline happening mainly in Uttar Pradesh. If this is found to be true, through a re-survey, the replacement birthrate will be achieved in Uttar Pradesh by the year 2011 instead of the predicted year, 2100   October 07, 1999   The Chicago Tribune

Millennium Census: India is a Billionaire .   The rate at which things are going, there will be a billion Indians waiting to usher in the new millennium. With the new methodology, even footpath-dwellers will be taken into account. 30,000 personnel are involved in the counting operations. Not just numbers, but characteristics of the population will be counted, including the social and economic aspects and basic facilities --- water, electricity, toilets, and the kind of fuel used in the kitchen, eating habits, job opportunities, the age of working members of the family, school- going children etc.   October 01, 1999  

Rushdie Wraps Up UN Book with a Row .   A UN-sponsored book on population growth, A Letter To Six Billion People, will go to press without a planned preface by Secretary-General Kofi Annan because it includes controversial remarks by co-author Salman Rushdie. Rushdie discusses the possibility of large-scale religious wars in the near future, saying such wars are unlikely because in certain religions -- he gives the example of Islam in Iran and Iraq -- there are too many strong differences and contradictions.   October 01, 1999   India Times

India Heading for Ecological Disaster .   India's Environment and Forests Minister Suresh Prabhu said that failure to take effective measures to curb runaway population could lead to an ecological disaster. There is an urgent need to generate an awareness. The rivers, for example, with tens of millions of people living on their banks and millions of tons of daily waste, have lost their ability to revive themselves. Environment education in schools needs to be revitalized   September 28, 1999   Reuters

Figuring it Out .   In the UNFPA's latest State of the World's Population report 6 Billion: A Time for Choices, the world's increasing population, instead of being viewed as a potentially productive asset, is treated as a burdensome liability for want of basic social services. Unfortunately, for the developing world, this will prove true and nowhere more so than in India. India's figures are on a par with some of the chronically poor, war-affected African nations. Half of its women are illiterate, the infant mortality rate is unacceptably high, and access to natural resources is shrinking. No seeker of political office in recent elections has paid lip service to these crucial life and death issues. Most polititians believe that a growing population must be contained by undemocratic methods, even though the government instituted a client-friendly reproductive health policy which takes a holistic view of population two years ago. It offers women's empowerment, education, access to health services, and a choice of reversible contraceptive methods. In Kerala where this was done, fertility levels have been pushed to an all time low   September 20, 1999   NY Times

Rethinking Population at a Global Milestone .   Contrasting the two most populous countries, India, home to 1 billion, which became a democracy, and China, home to 1.2 billion, which became authoritarian communist. China issued the harsh one-child policy, but the Chinese also made positive changes in the area of the economy, rural land ownership and social services. Semi-socialist India, because it was a democracy, lagged in introducing fundamental economic and social reforms. Only big industries were targeted, not rural doctors or village schools. While Indians enjoy free expression, other indicators would show the Chinese are better off: Literacy rate: China- 83%, India- 53-64% (depending on who you ask). Female primary school enrollment: China- 99.9%, India- 66%. Malnourished and underweight children under 5: India- 50%, China- 16%. Annual income $365 or less: China- 1/3, India-50%. China's exports are more than five times those of India. Lester Brown,of the Worldwatch Institute says it "is not whether India is a democracy or not, but whether there is leadership." Nobel laureate Amartya Sen says, "When lower fertility is harnessed to democracy it creates a dynamo," ..."more so if literacy and economic opportunities for women as well as basic health services are added to the mix." Much of India's leaders and thinkers have not seen these connections   September 20, 1999   NY Times

India Population at Brink of 1 Billion .   India's huge numbers will lead to severe malnutrition, greater unemployment and massive sanitation problems. 30% now live in cities, but by 2040, half will live in cities. India is growing not just by natural increase, but also by an influx of immigrants. Sanitation problems in cities and urban areas that are becoming super-slums is a big problem. One out of 10 children die before the age of 5. 50% of children under 15 are suffering from malnutrition. The poorer states like Bihar have a much higher birth rate than the national average of 3.4 children per woman, up to 10 children in rural regions, where having sons are important. In 1994, following a world trend, India switched its emphasis from demographic control to health care and education of women. But various programs, which included sterilization of men and distribution of free condoms and birth control pills, have not had much impact. [Perhaps because the birth control is not reaching the rural areas]   August 30, 1999   Reuters

Improving Quality of Care in India's Family Welfare Programme, the Challenge Ahead .   This is a new Population Council book illuminating the poor quality-of-care issues facing India's family planning program, which argues for a more intense focus on providing client-centered, high-quality family planning services. The book is edited by Michael A. Koenig and M.E. Khan, with contributions from more than two dozen social scientists, public health physicians, members of nongovernmental organizations, and women's health activists. "India's Family Welfare Programme remains characterized by an overriding concern for numbers--as measured by the recruitment of sterilization acceptors", the editors note. "The problems described are clearly not unique to India, but broadly characteristic of health and family planning services in many, if not most, developing-country settings." This book demonstrate how poor-quality services lead to lower levels of client satisfaction, a poor image, and general distrust of the public-sector system. For further information e-mail: pubinfo@popcouncil.org   August 25, 1999   Population Council

Strength in Numbers? India Debates Value, Cost of 1 Billion People .   A New Delhi street vendor says "We are not rich like America. There are only so many schools, so many jobs. The system cannot support so many people. If India reaches 1 billion, it will make us a weak nation. We will all end up fighting over food." At least people in the cities are having fewer children, but in the villages they don't now about contraceptives. Some see India's 1 billion, known in Hindi as 100 crore, as strengthing India's military ability. But, to social workers, physicians, and demographers who see the effects of rapid population growth on an impoverished nation , 100 crore seems dangerously misguided. India's population has nearly doubled in the past 30 years. 350 million people live in dire poverty, 400 million are illiterate, and crop land per person has shrunk by half since 1960. To a hospital designed to treat 500 outpatients a day, more than 7,000 come every day. In Bihar state, where women's literacy rates are lowest and family sizes are largest -- girls are often married by the age of 15 and pressured to produce children quickly. "Ask a woman in Bihar if she wants more children, and she will say no. Ask her if she is using [birth control], and she will also say no." Older Indians remember when people "died like flies" from plague and smallpox and malaria -- an enormous incentive to repopulate.

  August 23, 1999   Washington Post

Presence in India: Birth of Billionth Baby and Making Development Work .   Almost 400 million of India's people living on the equivalent of less than $1 a day. In rural areas 95% of the people do not have access to sanitation facilities. More than half the children under the age of 4 are undernourished. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has worked at supporting and revitalizing locally developed initiatives to generate employment, clean up the environment, employ women and other efforts that fall under the umbrella of sustainable development, funding research and design institutes that can produce higher quality goods for sale in international markets and also develop simple production techniques for people in small villages to give them an added income   August 19, 1999   Earth Times News

South Asia: a Himalayan Water Problem .   India, giant sluice gates regulate the flow of the mighty Ganges and the river divides into two main streams, one flowing southward to the eastern Indian port of Calcutta and the other eastward to Bangladesh. Unfortunately, too much of South Asia's rainfall pours down in too short a time, during the four monsoon months beginning June, when the rivers have been found to swell nearly 20 times. Barrages have been built on Indo-Nepal border across the Mahakali river which forms the western border Indo-Nepal, and on the Kosi river near the eastern Indo-Nepal border. Harnessing South Asia's Himalayan water resource is key to raising living standards in one of the world's poorest regions. An agreement was reached 3 years ago for sharing dry season flows at Farakka, New Delhi and Dhaka. But mutual trust and coordination seem to be lacking. Bangladesh is not satisfied even after years of diplomatic negotiations and various accords on sharing the river water. Nepal and tiny Bhutan feel disadvantaged with Indian involvement in joint river water development schemes. The Ganges and its Himalayan tributaries have provided the plains of north India and Bangladesh with farm abundance. The two largest Himalayan rivers -- the Ganges and the Brahmaputra -- along with their tributaries, feed into a large basin stretching from southern Tibet to the arid western region of India, providing the third largest water resource in the world after the Amazon and the Congo-Zaire group of rivers. Unfortunately, due to the huge population (half a billion people, and including the single largest concentration of the world's poorest) the region has nearly the lowest per capita water availability. The population is expected to double in the next three decades and there is expected to be a large increase in industrial demand for water   August 19, 1999   Interpress Service

Playing Politics with Population .   As long as children have a 1-in-10 chance of dying before their fifth birthday, it will be difficult to persuade India's women to plan smaller families. A comprehensive package that includes immunizations and prenatal checkups in small villages is replacing the old target based policies. But India cannot do it alone. Wealthier nations, including the United States, must keep up their commitment to achieving a sustainable population. Later this summer the House-Senate committee will be hammering out the differences between two compromise resolutions: the usual strictures that would gag family planning organizations from even discussing abortion, and the one requiring that family planning organizations certify that they are using US funds to reduce the incidence of abortion. The people of India and the developing world cannot wait much longer for the politicians to catch up.   August 18, 1999   Boston Globe Editorial

India Steps Into the BC Era .   Our demographic karma reflects both success and failure. As India celebrates its 52nd Independence Day, it population will reach one billion, but M. Vijayanunny, the census commissioner, says that India's b-date will will be nearer to May 11, 2000, ironically, the second anniversary of India's nuclear bomb! India will surpass China around 2040, and could well enter the 22nd century closer to the two billion mark. Unfortunately, three out of every five infants in India are born underweight and malnourished. Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Goa, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura also reached the transition point in population growth is when the total fertility rate (TFR) drops to the replacement rate of 2.1. Andhra Pradesh is expected to reach this transition point in 2002, then Karnataka, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Orissa in 2009-10, Gujarat in 2014, Assam in 2015, Punjab in 2025, Haryana in 2025, Bihar in 2039, Rajasthan in 2048, Madhya Pradesh beyond 2060 and Uttar Pradesh beyond 2100. The average fertility rate of India will reach the 2.1 replacement rate in 2026. However, 34% of the population is under 15, which gives an already large base the extra momentum of continued growth. Because of this momentum, the population of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar may not stop growing until 2045-2060 when population of these four will equal 60% of the population of India. Urbanisation is a powerful stimulus to reduce the fertility rate. However jobs are running short. 10 million new jobs have to be created every year across the country. In the '80s, the annual rate of job creation was 5-5.5 million and in the '90s, around 6.5-7 million. 370 million tons of cereals will be needed by 2020. But cereal production peaked at about 185 million tons in 1996-97, so cereal output has to double in the next 20 years. However rapid economic growth will lead to escalating demand for milk, eggs and meat which will mean greater use of cereals for livestock feed.August 16, 1999 India Today   August 16, 1999   India Today

Bursting on Brink of 1 Billion .   "Too many population," says soup vendor Muhammed Afzal. The UN Population Division said the 1 billionth baby would be born on India's Independence Day, August 15, but the country's census commission says that the projected date is May 11, 2000. Either way, the population grows by about 16 million a year - almost like adding a whole Australia every 12 months. The last census was in 1991. Population has tripled in the fifty years since India has become independent. Farmland is divided into smaller and smaller parcels as generations multiply, water tables are dropping rapidly, forests are shrinking. After agricultural land becomes scarce, thousands flee to the cities, forming sprawling, filthy shantytowns where only flies outnumber people. If you take the US population and squeeze it east of the Mississippi and then multiply by four, you get the density of India. Calcutta, Bombay, and New Delhi, all have more people than New York City, which has 7 million people. Recently authorities have tried a different approach in trying to curb family size. New programs educate young people, and offer a wide array of services including contraception   August 16, 1999   Associated Press

The Billionth Indian--not a Problem. .   The population of India has tripled since independence. With good policies, economy will grow fast, producing a labour shortage, and wages will rise fast. Poor people in many countries have no knowledge or access to contraception, they need assistance. A poor family is better able to feed and educate its children if it limits their number. Female literacy is vital. Additional children impose no obvious cash costs on a woman working on the family farm. But another child reduces the cash income of the family if the woman is working, so the real cost of additional children becomes evident. Good economic policies that improve working opportunities for women constitute a powerful family planning device: additional work and fewer children combine in a prosperous cycle. Prosperity-promoting policies will soon curb population growth (as happened in Korea). But curbing population alone will not produce prosperity. High population density can strain the environment. It can accelerate over-fishing, deforestation, soil erosion, but it is poverty that degrades the environment. Wealth generated by fast growth can finance a reversal of environmental degradation. Forests expanded at an average annual rate of 5,986 sq km in the US, 1,764 sq km in Canada, and 1,608 sq km in France in 1990-95, even as deforestation ravaged poor countries. Poor policies mean poor people and a poor environment   August 15, 1999   Times of India

India Reaches 1 Billion on August 15, No Celebration Planned .   By Lester Brown and Brian Halweil. Reaching one billion is not a cause for celebration in a country where 1/2 of the adults are illiterate, more than half of all children are undernourished, and 1/3 of the people live below the poverty line. Demographers expect the population to reach 1.5 billion by 2050. India is experiencing shrinking forests, deteriorating rangelands, and falling water tables. Even though grain production has tripled in the last 50 years, food production has barely kept up with population. In 1960, there was 0.21 hectares of grainland per person. By 1999, there was only 0.10 hectares per person and it is expected to shrink to 0.07 by 2050. Water levels are dropping now that water pumping is more common. Irrigated land accounts for 55% of the grain harvest. Farmland is divided each generation into smaller and smaller portions, resulting in a flight to the cities. The government of India, overwhelmed by sheer numbers, is suffering from demographic fatigue. India should look at the example of Zimbwabe where, after several decades of rapid population growth, the government has been unable to respond effectively to problems such as the HIV epidemic. Life expectancy there has fallen from 60 years in 1990 to 44 years at present and is expected to drop to 39 years by 2010. India spends only 0.7% of its GNP on health, which includes family planning   August 13, 1999   World Watch

India Gets Condom Vending Machines, Amid Concerns About Population Growth. .   India's first condom vending machine went into operation in a crowded marketplace in Delhi. Each costs one rupee (about 2.5 cents). The "Delhi experiment" of openness comes nearly 47 years after India become the first country in the world in 1952 to establish an official government family planning programme. Volunteer suppliers will be touring remote rural areas central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, where there is a lower couple protection rate. Condom and oral contraceptives are free throughout the country through government hospitals and health workers, but they have not been available on a regular basis. Many couples do not use contraceptives because of lack of assurance about supply. A group of experts recently favoured doing away with the idea of incentives and disincentives in achieving population targets in the country. The government's plan for giving "special salary raises" for employees who had sterilised themselves after two children was criticised. The country's first and only attempt at mass population control ended in disaster in the mid-1970s under the direction of Sanjay Gandhi, son of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Sanjay was accused of encouraging state government doctors to operate on as many people as possible, resulting in some people being forced to undergo sterlisation or being sterilised without their knowing.   August 01, 1999   Deutsche Presse-Agentur

President of Indian Medical Association (IMA) on Health of the Nation .   The IMA is one of the largest medical associations in the world, with over 1.5 lakh doctors spread across 23 states. The government's slogan of 30 years ago, `Health for all by 2000 AD', has remained a dream project with nothing more than a slogan. The infant mortality rate is still high at around 150 per thousand, where the figure should be 75 per thousand. Much is left wanting even when it comes to basic facilities like clean drinking water sanitation, hygiene, and environmental safeguards. A large section of the population does not know how to dispose off excreta. The population programme started in the early 1950s has been ineffective in controlling the burgeoning growth rate of around 2%; by 2025 we may surpass the population of China. The concept of family physicians still holds good in a major part of the country, so much so that our doctors have access to the family and a say in its affairs. But the IMA represents only 25% of the total number of medical professionals in India. Medical treatment at present has become very expensive. We are suggesting some sort of insurance scheme on the lines of the one in the UK   August , 1999   WorldWatch

Earth's Ills Worsen .   From a report by WorldWatch: India is pumping underground water faster than it can be replenished. Water tables are dropping, threatening a loss of food production. "Unless New Delhi can quickly devise an effective strategy to deal with spreading water scarcity, India, like Africa, may soon face a decline in life expectancy." The report said that the two big challenges are to stabilize climate and population, and that each family should have only two children   August , 1999   WorldWatch

Gender Issues in Family Planning .   India: The Annual Report, 1999, published by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare reports certain glaring facts, which can be related to gender issues.
1. The figures for 1997-98 show that in India, a total of 4.13 million cases of sterilization has taken place during this period. Out of these, the cases of vasectomy was only 0.07 millions whereas the cases of tubectomy was 4.06 millions.
2. Female literacy is one of the most important factors in lowering fertility. For example, higher the literacy, the lower is the fertility rate and vice versa. According to the survey, the literacy/fertility rate among women shows illiterate-4.03%, literate but less than middle completed-3.01%, middle school - 2.49%, high school and above-2.15%   August , 1999   Women on Line

 

INDIA: Doctors Receive Family Planning Training; More Rural medical practitioners are helping provide family planning services in India's rural state of Bihar. Access to government medical and family planning clinics is poor in the state, leaving rural residents to rely on local physicians, most of whom "are not formally qualified but have gained basic medical experience as assistants in hospitals and private clinics." The nonprofit organization Janani trains doctors to recognize sexually transmitted diseases and reproductive tract infections. Doctors are also recruited to sell contraceptives. Officials say the approach is meeting some success, as sales of condoms and birth control pills in the state have increased and more women are visiting clinics. Janani is now marketing contraceptives in neighboring Uttar Pradesh and plans to open a clinic in Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh (Vir Singh, Earth Times, 28 Jul). Sex Education Lacks Effectiveness The Indian government "stops shy of addressing some key issues like premarital sex, human sexuality and things like relationships by saying they are non-issues," said Elizabeth Vatsyayan of the AIDS Awareness Group. But India's young need exposure to family planning lessons, as data show that more young people are engaging in premarital sex. One NGO survey of secondary school students found that 63% of boys and 37% of girls were engaging in sex. Across India, abortion clinics report that as many as 40% of their clients are under age 20, and a new UNAIDS study shows that 60% of new HIV cases are among persons 15 to 24 years old. The Indian National Council for Education and Research Training, however, says the national sex education program is "adequate." Council coordinator J.L. Pandey: "We discourage the concept of premarital sex, in keeping with our social traditions and encourage other students towards activities like sports to supplement energies." Nongovernmental organizations such as NAZ disagree with such an approach, arguing that media exposure and other information sources have altered the perception of traditional values and the government's methods are outdated. Some private schools have taken the initiative to assist students in making informed choices. One principal said: "Parents have backed our move, as it is not always possible for them to talk to their children on these matters, and some government schools are making efforts too, but they are a handful only" (Rahul Shivshankar, Times of India, 28 Jul). Female Feticide A Growing Problem A large number of female fetuses are being killed in India, despite a government ban on the use of ultrasound to determine an unborn child's sex. Dr. Sharda Jain of the Indian Medical Association: "In the last two decades, feticide has taken a drastic turn. The pressure to have small families has made people want to be sure to have a son, as they are needed to conduct the last rites of the parents, such reasons are leading to feticide." The number of female fetuses killed each year solely because of their sex is difficult to determine, doctors say, since most cases go unreported (Karachi News International, 28 Jul). Female feticide has been reported in all but five of India's 32 states. In Bihar and Rajasthan, birth ratios have fallen to 600 females per 1,000 males. According to the Chennai Hindu, it is "imperative to bring the medicos and paramedics ethically together on the issue to fight the social evil." The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, which legalized abortion in a bid to make the practice safer in India, "has now become a handy tool to commit feticide." Often, it is difficult to determine whether an abortion is performed legitimately or for the elimination of a female offspring. The Hindu reports that plans are underway to educate students in order to "restore the status and dignity of the girl child" (Chennai Hindu, 27 Jul). The London Times reports that the Medical Council of India is joining the IMA is pressing legislation to "outlaw doctors who conduct ultrasound examinations for the purpose of aborting female fetuses" (David Orr, 29 Jul).

  July 29, 1999  

India's Population Approaches 1 Billion .   When India threw off colonialism 52 years ago, it had 345 million people. Since then, its population has tripled, now growing at 1.6% a year. China has three times the area of India, and reached a billion people in 1980. Within 40 years, India will surpass China - China's growth rate is only 0.9 percent. Indians say China achieved the lower rate through coercion and forced abortion, which democratic India could not condone. India's life expectancy is 63 years, up from 39 in the 1950s. Its fertility rate is 3.1, down from six births per woman in the 50s. Fields like education, health and agriculture may fail to stay ahead of the surging population. Underground water levels are lowering as more farmers turn to pumps to accomplish double-cropping for higher food production   July 27, 1999   New York Times

Indian Government Measures to Reduce Vehicular Pollution in Delhi and Surrounding Regions.   Vehicles contribute 70% of pollution. In 1970, it was only 20%.   February 11, 1999   M2 Presswire

Changing Population Policies .   While the step towards dropping targets and integrating women and child health into the programme is a sensible one, much more focussed training of health workers, last link in the health chain, has to be done. It is unrealistic for international agencies to expect that within five years such a major shift in policy can be implemented and can show results. There was a time gap of two years between endorsing the Programme of Action in Cairo and actually implementing the new policies in India. The system that had been put in place from 1960s, which required the health workers to fulfil set targets for sterilisation and contraceptive acceptance, was dropped. The Government acknowledged that the system had led to coercion, denial of choice and rights, created a negative attitude towards all family welfare programmes and led to a fudging of figures. In the new system, health workers continued motivating men and women to undergo sterilisations or accept contraceptives, but they were now also expected to monitor pregnant women, give them supplements to counter anaemia and other problems, check the health of children and their nutritional levels and maintain detailed records of all these activities. Without adequate training , health workers are bound to stick to what they know best - finding cases for sterilisation.

Health workers no longer have to fulfill targets. Initially, the data showed a drop in the number of cases of sterilisation and contraceptive use, but this was probably because health workers did not have to be creative with the data.

New studies by Healthwatch, a collective of individuals and groups concerned about reproductive health and rights that came together after ICPD, show that more women know about contraception and spacing and want these procedures.

On the other hand, the health workers are over-burdened and expected to fulfil too many tasks; Many simply reduced their tasks just to doling out iron and folic acid tablets to pregnant women and ensuring that they take their tetanus toxoid dose in time. But for women and children the absence of reliable and accessible health care can make the difference between life and death. Trained gynaecologists are not available to do abortions, so women have to pay private practitioners. In Tamil Nadu apart from Kerala, where the population growth rate has reached the replacement level, a key factor has been an efficient primary health care system, including availability of gynaecologists   February 05, 1999   The Hindu

  Current population (1999) is 1 billion. In 1998 the growth rate was 1.86%, down from 2.2% in the 80's. However, the country's population will continue to grow, adding 18 million people a year, due to the large young population base in the 10-24 age group, approximating 240 million people.   1999  

Recent Environmental News for India: .  
A report by an environmental group demanding the creation of a "Toxics Release Inventory" to give the public information on toxic emissions from industrial plants in Gujarat (Times of India, 17 Dec);

A move by the Delhi state government to give stronger enforcement powers to forest-protection officers (Rajnish Sharma, Times of India, 17 Dec),

An effort in Madhya Pradesh to invite grassroots participation in forest protection (Vanita Srivastava, Times of India, 20 Dec);

A crackdown on polluting vehicles by the Mumbai (Bombay) High Court (Vaishnavi Sekhar, Times of India, 22 Dec).

  1999   Times of India

  One innovative experimental approach in India is located in a buffer zone bordering a wildlife preserve. This project integrates it's education and training components so that community volunteers can educate villagers about the important conservation work that protects the neighboring wildlife. Community volunteers also provide counseling information on family planning options. This approach enhances the understanding of how childbearing decisions can impact wildlife and habitat.   1999  

Packard Foundation: India Population Reaches One Billion .   UN officials say a baby born today, August 15th, will bring India's population to the one billion mark. The baby will likely be born to a rural family since 72% of Indians live in rural areas. If this baby is a girl, her opportunities for education and prosperity are far fewer than if she is born a boy. Regardless of gender, he or she will have difficulty finding enough food to eat or clean water to drink. India adds more people to the world annually than any other nation. Unitl recently in India, sterilization has been the only available means of contraception available to women. Today, one out of every four Indian women is not aware that modern methods (such as the pill, IUD, injections or condoms) exist or where to find these services. Uttar Pradesh is considered the most populous Indian state. If it were independent, it would be the fifth largest country in the world. A mass media program in Uttar Pradesh uses puppet shows, radio and television advertising, traditional folk media and other forms of mass media to communicate messages about informed choice and spousal communication. Funding from private organizations such as the David and Lucile Packard Foundation advances this work. The Foundation's five-year plan to provide over three hundred million dollars makes it the largest private donor in the population field   1999  

Population Control Raises Hackles .   A population control bill introduced in the Delhi State Assembly ignores commitments made by India to forego coercive tactics. The bill would deny ration cards to families exceeding the two-child policy. Ration cards are not only used as entitlement to subsidised food, but they also serve as identity cards and provide proof of residence. The bill also demands that families which exceed the quota be punished by denial of bank loans, enrollment in government housing schemes and cooperative societies and the parents lose the right to contest civic body elections. Author of the bill Kiran Choudhury says Dehli's population will hit 15 million by the turn of the century unless something "drastic" is done. But women's rights groups such as the All India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA) point out that Delhi's population is growing rapidly because of migration from rural areas rather than high fertility. They pointed out that, in southern Kerala state, increased social sector programmes had resulted in a drastic drop in family size and population. In contrast, a targeted approach, accompanied by coercion resulted in failure to control population in states like northern Uttar Pradesh. According to VHAI's Shiva, the infant mortality rate in India at 74 per thousand is still too high to expect people to take the two-child norm seriously. "There is no question of a poor woman agreeing to have only two children when she knows that both of them may die of some disease or the other," she said. "Basic survival, potable water, proper sanitation and affordable health care have to be the crux of any population policy."   1999  

  21 percent of the world population increase is concentrated in India   November , 1998   UN Report Nov 98

25 Million Births in India Each Year .   (more than China and almost the same as Sub-Saharan Africa). Generally the states with the highest fertility those with the highest rates of infant mortality and undernourished children, and the lowest rates of female literacy.   August 21, 1997   Popline

India for Ensuring Advancement of Women in All Fields.   India has asked the international community to ensure advancement of women and provide resources to the poor nations to enable them to reach these goals. Gender mainstreaming and pursuit of rights based approach have contributed substantially to the progress made towards achieving gender equality. It is imperative that the international community recognize the co-relation and take enhanced cooperation and provide necessary resources, so that commitments of the 1995 Beijing Platform of Action are realized by all member states.      1995   Indian Express

  India is a functioning democracy, which is good, but the bad news is that, although things have improved in the 50 years since independence, 320 million people are still below the poverty line. India needs to make more contraceptives available - a measure that has been particularly effective in Bangladesh - and increase promotion of women's education to reduce unwanted pregnancies. Agricultural reform is important - farmers would use less fuel and water if they were forced to pay economic prices for them, which they could afford if they received a reasonable return on their crops. Financial Times (London). August 9, 1999   August 9, 1999   Financial Times (London)

 

August 8, 1999 Xinhua Billion People and Still Counting: India and a Terrible Tragedy. The billion people club: India joined China as one of only two countries with populations of more than a billion each. China reached that number in 1980. The next largest country, the United States, has only 276 million people and won't reach the billion mark for at least another hundred years. Countries with rapid population growth such as Kenya, Nigeria and Brazil, won't reach a billion for another 200 years. Russia and the 15 countries of the European Union will be eligible for billion-people club membership in 300 years. China's draconian measures of abortions and one-child families slowed down growth rates dramatically. India's population is doubling every three decades. Because most of India's growth is occurring in impoverished rural areas and in urban slums, increased population contributes significantly to the already huge cohort of poverty. 300-400 million people earn less than a $1 a day. India needs to make available more condoms and other contraceptives, plus provide more jobs for women. $200 million a year for family planning comes from foreign aid. But much of this money lies unused because of bureaucratic infighting, lack of adequate distribution, and political indifference to the population issue. The late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed a state of emergency that involved measures such as the forced sterilization of men. The lesson of her assassination remains vivid, and relevant, in the minds of the men who rule India, plus these men see a huge citizenry as mammoth vote bank. Politicians use the rallying cry: "Garibi hatao!" or "Let's get rid of poverty!", with little attention paid to the burgeoning population.

 

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