NEW DELHI, May 24: Family planning programmes in India have failed because of bureaucratic apathy and intervention even though there has been no dearth of political will and funding during the past eight five-year plans. According to Professor Ashish Bose, a noted demographer, after fifty years of population planning, the country is still whistling in the dark looking for a population policy even though the increase in family planning outlay during the past eight five-year plans has been much faster than the growth in population itself.
Bose, who was a member of the Swaminathan Committee appointed by the government to look into the population problem, said successive governments took various initiatives and formed committees to look into the issue and submit reports. However, the reports were scuttled by the bureaucracy.
The Health and Family Welfare Ministry constituted an expert group in 1993 under the chairmanship of Dr M.S. Swaminathan to draw up a draft population policy for the consideration of Parliament. In May 1994, the report of the expert group was submitted to then PM P.V. Narasimha Rao. It was placed on the table of Parliament but never came up for discussion.
``We had recommended the merger of family planning with health and de-bureaucratisation of the family planning programme by creating a new structure called Population and Social Development Commission. The report was scuttled by the bureaucracy as it did not suit them,'' Bose added.
According to an official report, the country's population was 846.3 million as per the 1991 census against 683.3 million in 1981. The absolute addition to the population in the decade 1981-91 was 163 million. The annual exponential rate of growth of population has come down marginally from 2.22 per cent during 1971-81 to 2.14 per cent during 1981-91. The sex ratio, which was 934 in 1981, declined to 927 in 1991. The report states that the experience of implementing family welfare programme over the past four decades has brought out the importance of adopting a multi-sectoral approach towards population stabilisation efforts.
