Emergence of the Indian National Family Planning Program.

Abstract

In comparison with neighboring Pakistan and other developing countries Indias rate of population growth was not particularly high. Its overall annual rate of population increase was about 2.2 percent in 1961 and 2.5 percent in 1971 with substantial differences from region to region. Relatively high mortality together with a high prevalence of widowhood and a cultural taboo on remarriage by widows prevented extremely high levels of population growth. Nonetheless more than a million people were added to Indias population each month. Furthermore 2.4 percent of the worlds area which contained about 15 percent of the worlds population accounted for a population density of 300 or more people per square kilometer. Govind Narain Secretary of the Ministry of Healths Family Planning and Urban Development Department in the late 1960s expressed the prevailing government outlook: high growth rate of this large population . . . poses tremendous socio-economic problems not only for the maintenance of minimal standards of living but also for raising them. Already a vast development by way of large increases in agricultural and industrial production has been neutralized by population growth. . . . The manifold expansion of employment housing educational and other facilities has been almost entirely swallowed by the fast growing population. (excerpt)