Population: Historical Prospective

Discussions/Debates on population policy and population growth had started in India even before Independence when a Sub Committee on population was set up by the National Planning Committe appointed in 1938 by the Interim Government. The National Planning Committee, in its resolution in 1940 said, inter alia, that in the interest of social economy, family happiness and national planning, family planning and a limitation of children are essential and the State should adopt a policy to encourage these.
The First Five Year Plan called for an explicit population policy and considered family planning as a step towards improvement in health of mothers and children.
The basic strategy in the First Plan was to treat family planning as a part of the health programme and provide 100% funds for it as a centrally sponsored programme. The position continues to be almost the same even today. Increasing funds for family planning were allocated from one plan to the other. In 1966, a separate Department of Family Planning was carved out in the Ministry of Health in order to strengthen the population control programme.
A modified National Population Policy was announced in 1977 which viewed the policy "as an integral part of education, health, maternal and child health etc. and stressed the voluntary nature of the family planning programme". During this time, the name of the programme also changed from Family Planning to Family Welfare which is retained till date. The Government appointed a Working Group on Population Policy. Its report advocated a Net Reproduction Rate of one (NRR=1) by the year 2000, which meant a Birth rate of 21 and a Death Rate of 9 per thousand. This implied a population growth rate of 1.2 per cent per year. This was considered as the threshold level for population stabilization. The recommendation of the Working Group still remains the guiding number for our population programme.
In 1983, the Government announced a National Health Policy which adopted the recommendations of the Working Group on Population Policy as the long term demographic goal of the country.
The 1986 version of India's Population Policy views family planning in a broader perspective of child survival, women's status and employment, literacy and antipoverty efforts. The policy calls for increasing age at marriage, postponing the birth of the first child, increasing birth intervals and concentrating on child survival.
In 1991, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare decided to impart a "new dynamism' to the programme by devising innovative strategies. This led to the development of an Action Plan for revamping family welfare programmes in india. The Plan emphasizes the need to improve the quality of services and to devise special area specific strategies. It calls for micro-level planning, priority filling of vacant positions, construction of subcentres and ICDS centers, improved management training and active involvement of district administration.
In 1993, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare appointed an expert Group under the Chairmanship of Dr. M.S. Swaminathan to draw up a Draft Population Policy for consideration by Parliament. The report of this Group was submitted to the Ministry in 1994. The Report basically related population growth to the basic needs, democratic decentralization, gender issues and eco-system. These features were incorporated in the 'Statement on National Population Policy prepared by the Ministry in 1996-97.
The five states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Orissa, which constitute 44% of the total population of India in 1996, will constitute 48% of the total population of India in 2016. These states will contribute 55% of the total increase in population of the country during the period 1996-2016. The progresss in these states would determine the year and size of the population at which the country achieves population stabilisation. In all the states performance in the social and economic sector has been poor. The poor performance is the outcome of poverty, illiteracy and poor development which co-exist and reinforce each other. Urgent energetic steps are required to be initiated to assess and fully meet the unmet needs for maternal and child health (MCH) care and contraception through improvement in availability and access to family welfare services in the states of UP, MP, Rajasthan and Bihar in order to achieve a faster decline in their mortality and fertility rates. The performance of these states would determine the year and size of the population at which the country achieves population stabilization.
National Population Policy 2000
One of the major recoomendations of the NDC Sub Committee on Population was that a National Population Policy should be drawn up so that it provides reliable and relevant policy frame work not only for improving Family Welfare Services but also for measuring and monitoring the delivery of family welfare services and demographic impact in the new millenium. The Dept of Family Welfare has drawn up the National Population Policy 2000 it provides reliable and relevant policy frame work for improving quality and coverage , measuring and monitoring the delivery of family welfare programme so as to enable the increasingly literate and aware families to achieve their reproductive goals, and the country to achieve rapid population stabilization; simultaneously the policy aims at promoting synergy with the ongoing educational, info-technology and socio-economic transition so that India can achieve not only rapid population stabilization, but also sustainable development, improvement in economic ,social and human development in the new millennium.
One of the the major objective of the Policy is that the country should achieve replacement level of fertility by 2010. The country’s medium and long term efforts will be focussed on bringing about an accelerated convergence of ongoing demographic, socio-economic, educational and information technology transitions, enable the increasingly literate and aware families to achieve their reproductive goals, and the country to achieve rapid population stabilisation, sustainable development and improvement in quality of life.