Evolution of India’s Population Policies

Pre-Independence Period

• Before independence, the Britishers did not consider population growth as a problem. Their attitude towards birth control was one of indifference because they never wanted to interfere with the values, beliefs, customs and traditions of Indians.
• That is why this phase is called the Period of Indifference. However, the intelligensia in India was aware of the problem of growing population and did advocate birth control.
• Among them P.K. Wattal was the pioneer who wrote a book on Population Problem in India in 1916, followed by R.D. Karve, Rabindranath Tagore, P.N. Sapru, Jawaharlal Nehru and Bhore Committee among others who advocated birth control.

After Independence Period

• Even before independence, attempts were made to come up with recommendations and solutions to India’s burgeoning population problem. The efforts both pre- and post-independence are mentioned below.
• Radha Kamal Mukherjee Committee (1940): In 1940, the Indian National Congress appointed a Committee headed by a social scientist Radha Kamal Mukherjee to suggest solutions to arrest the population which has started increasing rapidly after 1921. The committee recommended self-control, generating awareness of cheap and safe birth control measures, discouraging polygamy, among others, as measures to bring down the rate of population growth.
• Bhore Committee: The Health Survey and Development committee under Sir Joseph Bhore recommended ‘deliberate limitation of family’ as a measure to control the population growth. This committee was set up in 1943 and submitted its report in 1946.
• India became one of the first developing countries to come up with a state-sponsored family planning programme in the 1950s.
• A population policy committee was established in 1952. However, the policies framed in the early fifties were largely arbitrary and so not successful.
• In 1956, a Central Family Planning Board was set up and its focus was on sterilization.
• In 1976, GOI announced the first National Population Policy. Some of the measures to check the population growth as part of this policy include:
• Increased the minimum legal marriageable age for boys and girls to 21 and 18 respectively.
• Providing monetary incentives for employing birth control.
• Improving women’s literacy levels through formal and informal channels.
• Population was made a criteria in deciding the quantum of central assistance to states.
• Using the different forms of media to popularize family welfare programmes.
• Introducing population education into the formal education system.
• During the Emergency period (1975-77), coercive measures were used to reduce the population growth. There were mass forced sterilizations. This, however, backfired as it discredited the entire family planning programme of the government.
• In 1977, after the Emergency ended, the new government discarded the use of force in family planning and the family planning programme was renamed as the family welfare programme.

Population Policy : 1977  Renaming the family planning programme into family welfare programme;  Fixing the marriage age for girls at 18 years and for boys at 21 years. This has been implemented by the Child Marriage Restraint (Amendment) Act, 1978; Making sterilisation voluntary; Including population education as part of normal course of study;Monetary incentive to those who go in for sterilization and tubectomy; Private companies to be exempted in corporate taxes if they popularise birth control measures among employees; Use of media for spreading family planning in rural areas, etc. this policy put an end to compulsory sterilisation and laid emphasis on voluntary sterilization.

• The National Health Policy was adopted in 1983 which emphasized ‘securing the small family norm through voluntary efforts and moving towards the goal of population stabilization’.
• A Committee on Population was appointed in 1991 which submitted its report in 1993 in which it recommended the formu­lation of a National Population Policy to take a ‘a long-term holistic view of development, population growth, and environ­mental protection’ and to ‘suggest policies and guidelines [for] formulation of programmes’ and ‘a monitoring mechanism with short- medium- and long-term perspectives and goals’.
• Accordingly, an Expert Group headed by Dr. MS Swaminathan was set up to create the draft national population policy.
• The National Population Policy finally came into force in 2000.