From population to people

The focus of the book is on people and not on aggregate numbers as reflected in population statistics. The author maintains that demographers tend to get stuck in decimal points while family planning administrators are obsessed with targets and achievements. In such a situation, family planning is not likely to succeed. Hope lies in going beyond decimal points and family planning targets. India's family planning programme has become increasingly vertical, bureaucratic and dehumanised, where people do not count: only the number of sterilisation cases matter. And all this has happened in the face of the professed policy of making family planning "people's movement." a

What we are witnessing today is the Government's helpless attempt to bring down the birth rate, in the absence of a signifi cant dent on the high female illiteracy rates and unacceptable infant mortality rates. in large States like Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh (BIMARU States) for about which account 40 per cent of India's population. This book make our planners makers sit up and should and policy rethink the options before them and revamp the health and family planning programme. statistics to will not do.