TN nurse among TIME's 'Heroes for the Planet'

TN nurse among TIME's 'Heroes for the Planet'
PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

NEW DELHI, APRIL 15: A nurse from Tamil Nadu has joined Britain's Prince Charles and other 'heroes' for her work in advocating family planning choices in India.

Thirty two-year-old Nirmala Palsamy has been named one of TIME magazine's Heroes for the Planet and is one among only eight heroes to figure in TIME's first-ever global special edition How to Save the Earth published on the occasion of Earth Day (on April 22).

The credit for India's more humane and effective family planning choices go to local health-care workers like Palsamy, who heads the Village Health Nurse Association in Tamil Nadu, according to a TIME magazine release.

The other newly-named heroes include Prince Charles for his organic farming and village development initiatives and Julia Butterfly Hill who lived for 738 days atop a California redwood tree to save it from loggers.

The magazine has also recognised the contribution of Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy for her campaign to stop dams on the Narmada river.

Palsamy complains that men do not concern themselves with choices of birth control. "Family planning is a social responsibility," she says "but everything is targeted at women. You can't really call it family planning until the whole family is involved."

She told her superiors that birth-rate targets made mothers distrust nurses and resist the policy and that nurses would gladly forego sterilization bonuses if allowed to do their jobs without government interference.

Tamil Nadu's population growth rate has dropped from 1.5 per cent in 1991 to one per cent in 1999 compared to 1.8 per cent for India as a whole, the magazine said.