If ever there is a controversy that needs to be capped pronto, it is this one. The war of words between minister of state for health and family welfare Renuka Chowdhury and the Hindustan Latex Ltd (HLL) over the supply of condoms to the ministry comes at a time when the country's family welfare programme is in poor shape. While the old, insensitive approach of setting arbitrary targets and wielding scalpels on reluctant people in laparascopy camps is now quite rightly regarded as unacceptable, today's family planning wallahs seem to be floundering on bureaucratic indifference and apathy. In the meanwhile, some 72,000 children are being added every day to India's already burgeoning population.The condom component of the government's family welfare strategy has long been recognised as extremely crucial. Not only are condoms the ideal method for spacing childbirth within a family, it is perhaps the only aid actively promoted by the health authorities that places the responsibility of contraception on themale. Ever since the excesses of the Emergency, vasectomy has become something of a dirty word in the popular lexicon and the number of vasectomies performed each year is negligible. As a result, Indian family welfare administrators chose the soft option of concentrating their energies on the hapless woman. A National Family Health Survey conducted recently indicated that female sterilisation accounted for over 80 per cent of family planning methods adopted in India. This points to a failure on many counts. Since it's only the relatively older woman who would opt for a irreversible method like sterilisation, it means that there are numerous, sexually-active couples in the reproductive age who could benefit from an efficient barrier method like condoms but are not being provided with them. The low levels of condom use also indicate that women are left to suffer from unwanted pregnancies and continue to be vulnerable to sexually-transmitted disease including HIV/AIDS. It has been estimated that a country as bigas this would require some 1,500 million condoms a year to ensure adequate coverage.
When Renuka Chowdhury took over as the family welfare minister last year, she fell to the task of promoting condoms as a family planning device with characteristic energy, even putting forward the somewhat radical suggestion that they be served along with the supari after a hotel meal! But she soon came across a major problem. The condoms being supplied by the government-owned Hindustan Latex Ltd to the ministry were evidently of substandard quality. The ministry then sought to get its condom supplies from four private companies after scaling down its order of HLL condoms. This, in turn, has led to sharp protests from the company which is dependent upon government orders for its survival. But in this situation where charges and counter-charges are being traded by the day, family welfare administrators must take care to ensure that the social marketing of inexpensive condoms is not affected.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
