At a time when the country is reeling under spiraling inflation and food scarcity, there’s more bad news! Government’s population control measures seem to be completely failing with the latest official data indicating a significant decline of nearly 6 per cent in the number of total family planning acceptors such as sterilisation, condoms and oral pills between 2011-12 and 2012-13 across the States (see box).
In fact, ringing an alarm bell in the backdrop of population boom — with the figure of two billion Indians staring the country — the total family planning acceptors in the country after reporting an increase over the years have recently, especially after 2007-08, shown a gradual declining trend. As a result, a significant proportion of pregnancies continue to be unplanned while the contraceptive needs of millions of women remain unmet and contraceptive choices conspicuous by its absence. Quality of care within the family planning programme too declined.
Available data shows that across the country around 4.6 million people opted for sterilisation during 2012-13, which was lower by 3.04 lakh (6.2 per cent) as compared to 2011-12. Of the total sterilisations conducted, vasectomy (male sterilisation) comprised only 2.6 per cent.
The usage of oral pills was also low. During the year under review, 6.24 million oral pill users were reported as against 6.50 million in 2011-12. Among major States, Assam, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal have reported increased number of oral pill users in 2012-13 as compared to 2011-12 while in respect of other major States there was a significant drop in the number of users. According to the data available, another contraceptive method, condom too had few takers. The number of equivalent condom users came down from 15.0 million in 2011-12 to 13.9 million in 2012-13. The increase in condom users was reported from four major States Karnataka, Kerala, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh (compared to 2011-12). The significant observation is that the number of takers of free condoms decreased by 11.6 per cent in 2012-13 as compared to 2011-12. The number of users has also decreased in the case of commercial distribution.
It was only the intrauterine device (IUD) insertion whose demand was on the higher side, though it was just a marginal increase of .3 per cent during 2012-13 as compared to 2011-12. Among the major States showing increase in performance were Bihar, Haryana, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal while usage has gone down in Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.
Of the total number of sterilisations, Sikkim had the highest percentage of vasectomies (24.3%) in 2012-13 while no vasectomy has been reported in A&N Islands and lakshadweep. The number of vasectomies carried out in almost all major States was quite insignificant as compared to number of tubectomies.