History of Family Planning in India

Abstract

India was the country in the world to launch family planning in 1952 but still striving hard to stabilize the population and also to offer healthy and productive life to its citizen. Uncontrolled population growth is impediment to national development. The core assumption behind is that decline in birth rates during the early stages of demographic transition can promote economic growth, reduce environmental pressures, reduce dependency ratio and strengthen a society’s ability to invest in health and education (Code, Hoover and Press, 1958).With this aim and objectives major emphasis was laid down during the plan period to overcome the problem of population growth. Initially family planning was introduced to control the birth rate either by family limitation or spacing of the children. The period (1957-61)worked on increasing the clinics. The period (1967-74) marked the beginning of set targets for sterilization and IUD insertion. But it got setback during emergency and marked the turning point in the history of family planning. In recent years family planning has under gone a paradigm shift. It re-positioned not only to achieve population stabilization but emerged as one important intervention to reduced maternal and infant mortalities. A target free approach based on the unmet needs for contraception; equal emphasis on spacing and limiting methods and promoting “Children by choice” are the key family planning approaches.