Social Development in Independent India

4

Population and Family Planning

S. N. Jha

 

 

 

Population and family planning (FP) have formed significant national policy concerns since Independence. The family planning programme (FPP), launched in India in 1952, was one of the largest public health initiatives in the world. India, at that time, was a typically agrarian, low-income country with high birth and death rates. The death rate, at about 28 per thousand in the decade 1941–1950, reflected poor diet, insufficient sanitation, and an absence of effective health services. The birth rate was 40 per thousand in this period, so the rate of natural increase worked out to 12.6. In the 1920s, a historically unprecedented sustained decline in the death rate set in, and, with birth rates ...