Health and Family Planning

Family planning is the planning of when to have children, and the use of birth control and other techniques to implement such plans. Other techniques commonly used include sexuality education, prevention and management of sexually transmitted infections, pre-conception counseling and management, and infertility management.

Since the 1970s, India’s economic growth  rate has risen, poverty has declined, and social indicators have improved. Nevertheless, over a quarter (28.6%) of India’s population currently  lives below the national poverty line, and 80% of the entire population lives on less than $2 per day. Twenty-eight percent of the population lives in urban areas. India’s social indicators remain weak by most measures of human development, and   living   standards   are   still   among   the poorest in the world.

In  1952, the  Indian  Government  was  one  of the first in the world to formulate a national  family  planning  programme,  which  was  late of  modern  prenatal  diagnostic  techniques, expanded  to  encompass  maternal  and  child largely for sex-selective abortion. health,  family  welfare,  and  nutrition.  India is committed to promoting a small family norm and supporting population control and development  programmes. 

In a country with population more than 1.17 billion, there is an urgent need to check the increasing population but there will be no forced family planning drive for that. In the Lok Sabha it was recently said  by our Health Minister, Azad that there will be no stringent law, force, but only through awareness, efforts would  be made to control population.

Population stabilisation should be the top priority of the central and state governments because unchecked population adds to poverty, unemployment and food shortage.

It has been reviewed that southern states had beaten northern states in family planning by targeting two children and they are paying more attention to the stabilization plan of the country which is facing unpredictable and erratic phases due to rising population.

Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad clarifies in parliament that government has a target of achieving Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of 2:1 which means two kids per couple but unable to accomplish it because northern states have not participated in realizing this goal, they fail to maintain the average family size.

In Parliament, many of the MPs hold a view that couple with single or two kids should be given some incentives whereas Sumitra Mahajan of the BJP disagreed with this notion and said that development would be the best contraceptive to curb the increasing population. He said that all the issues like price rise would be solved if population would get controlled. At last he concluded the discussion that all targets can be achieved only through awareness.

Family Planning, Health , Poverty and Unemployment are inter related issues and each has its solution in the other. Education and Awareness is the key solution to all these problems.

Sources: 
hindustantimes.com
wikipedia.com
searo.who.int