The Hindu : National : Population control: `implementation is the challenge'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Apr 07, 2005

National

National

Population control: `implementation is the challenge'

By Gargi Parsai

NEW DELHI, APRIL 6. The biggest challenge to the success of population and health issues is the implementation by States, health being a State subject, the Union Health and Family Welfare Secretary, P.K. Hota, told a workshop on Population, Health and Gender issues here on Tuesday.

While this may not be entirely true with the Centre's flip-flop on population stabilisation programmes, (shifting from targets, to target-free to delivery system approach) he said it with reference to the forthcoming launch of the National Rural Health Mission from April 12.

The workshop, organised by the Press Institute of India with the Population Council, highlighted the fact that while the Centre had — under pressure from civil society groups and the media — given up targeted approach to population stabilisation, there are several States that are following the two-child norm with disastrous consequences. These States include Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Rajasthan.

Distorted policy

The Centre has not been able to prevail upon the States concerned to do away with this distorted policy, which promotes incentives and disincentives. ``A two-child norm has the potential to cause immense harm to women's health in the existing social situation where son preference is high and women's status is low. And there is no guarantee that the population growth rate will be affected at the end of it all,'' pointed out Abhijit Das of Sahayog, Lucknow.

It is believed that the two-child norm was derived from the one-child norm in China. But facts prove otherwise: The decline in the population growth rate took place before the one-child norm was introduced. Equal if not slightly higher decline has taken place in Kerala without imposition of any norms. In China sex pre-selection for a male child, had been very high leading to large decline in sex ratio and trafficking and violence against women have increase. Even that country has had to reverse the policy.

Unmet need

The population growth continued to be high because a large population which was in the reproductive age group was contributing about 60 per cent to growth, unmet need for contraception, high fertility due to infant mortality rate and girls being married at a young age.

Gender specialist, Suman Parashar of the Registrar-General of India's office mentioned the declining sex ratio of girl-child in the 0 to 6 age group in metropolitan cities as against rural India. The lowest ratio is reported from Ahmedabad (822 per 1000 males), followed by Surat (827), Kanpur (855), Delhi (870), Jaipur (882), Pune (903), Lucknow (907), Greater Mumbai (919), Bangalore and Kolkata (941), Hyderabad (945), Chennai (967). The answer lay in monitoring sex ratio at birth from Civil Registration Data.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

National