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Bureacracy strangling FP programmes, says expert

Family planning programmes in India failed because of bureaucratic apathy and intervention, even though there has been no dearth of political will and funding in the past eight five-year plans, says Professor Ashish Bose, a noted demographer.

According to Professor Bose, after 50 years, the country is still groping in the dark for a suitable population policy though the increase in family planning outlay in the last eight five-year plans is far more than required. ''Yet we are nowhere near the objective of population stabilisation,'' he says.

Professor Bose, a member of the M S Swaminathan committee appointed by the government to look into the population problem, said successive governments since Independence had taken steps to look into the problem and submit reports to the government. However, the reports were all scuttled by the bureaucracy, he says.

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 the then prime minister P V Narasimha Rao. The report was placed on the table of Parliament soon after, 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 since it did not suit it,'' Professor Bose says.

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 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 1000:934 in 1981, declined to 1000:927 in 1991.

The report says the experience with family welfare programmes over the last four decades had highlighted the importance of a holistic and multi-sectoral approach towards population stabilisation.

''No longer can it be considered the responsibility of organisations set up for providing family welfare services. Various departments of the central and state governments, as also local government entities, will have to play a direct and active role,'' Professor Bose says.

About the budgetary allocation, the report says that during the first plan (1951-55) the department had an outlay of Rs 6.5 million against an expenditure of Rs 1.4 million. It was marginally increased during the second (1956-61) and third (1961-66) plans to Rs 50 million (outlay), Rs 21.5 million (expenditure) and Rs 270 million (outlay) and Rs 248.6 million (expenditure) respectively. In the eighth plan (1992-97), the outlay was Rs 65 billion.

Professor Bose, who was also chairman of the informal drafting committee, said that after a lapse of three years of inactivity, the family welfare department prepared in November 1996 a statement on the national population policy, which, it claimed, had the approval of the then health and family welfare minister.

The statement drew extensively from the Swaminathan committee report but left out the fundamental philosophy of the proposed policy, namely, relating population growth to the worsening eco-system, gender issues and basic needs keeping in mind democratic norms.

Professor Bose said the population policy was a corrupted version of the Swaminathan committee draft population policy which had also been tabled in Parliament. On August 26, 1997, the then Lok Sabha speaker Purno A Sangma had, in a speech in Parliament, stressed the need for taking the Swaminathan committee report off the shelf.

He said former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was so annoyed with the family welfare department that he thought of dismantling it in 1985.

Even in 1977, the Janata government headed by Morarji Desai appointed a working group on population policy. The report was submitted to Indira Gandhi in May 1980 because by the time the report was prepared, the Janata party government had fallen and Gandhi had come back to power.

The report had recommended a net production of one by 2000 which meant a birth rate of 21 and a death rate of nine per thousand. ''This was the threshold of population policy eventually. But in 1977 we were nowhere near a birth rate of 21 except in Kerala and Tamil Nadu (except Goa, Nagaland and Manipur).

Professor Bose feels the crux of India's population problem lies in the area covering Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, which account for 40 per cent of the country's population, 42 per cent of the absolute increase in population and 48 per cent of the illiterate population.

UNI

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