The Hindu : Check population growth, PM tells `laggard' States

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jan 17, 2003

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Check population growth, PM tells `laggard' States

By P. Sunderarajan

NEW DELHI Jan. 16. The Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, today asked the Chief Ministers of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan to pull their socks up and take immediate measures to address the problem of population growth. The "laggard'' performance of the four States was affecting not only their socio-economic development, but of other States as well.

Addressing a meeting of the Chief Ministers at his residence here, specially to discuss the population stabilisation issue, he said that "since these four States alone account for 37 per cent of India's population, their laggard performance is pulling down the socio-economic development of the country as a whole.''

The strategy should focus on providing better health care and improving access to quality education for girl children, apart from strengthening the contraceptive services, as there was a crucial link between population stabilisation and improved healthcare delivery system and the educational status of women, he said.

He emphasised the need to ensure that the funds allocated for family welfare, improvement of medicare infrastructure and girls' education were used properly and fully only for these purposes. "It saddens me to note that (many times) funds released even for the payment of salaries to auxiliary nurse midwives (ANMs), who are the most important field functionaries in the population stabilisation and family welfare programmes in rural areas, are not paid to them for several months.''

Stressing that officials responsible for the implementation of population stabilisation programmes should not be transferred frequently, Mr. Vajpayee urged that special efforts should be made to fill up the posts of doctors, ANMs and other technical staff, which were lying vacant in "large numbers.''

He asked the Chief Ministers to review the implementation of health, family welfare and girls' education programmes and monitor the "actual'' number of eligible couples having access to various methods of contraception on a monthly basis, and send the report to the Prime Minister's Office and the Union Health Ministry. Giving a commitment that he would hold regular meetings with them to review the progress, he urged them to make their programmes gender-sensitive.

"Make women's empowerment central to your strategy. Patriarchal attitude, dowry system and violence against women have to be dealt with firmly. Unless we work towards bringing about a positive change in attitudes and social behaviour, achievement of our cherished development goals will continue to elude us.''

The Tenth Plan document, which had set a goal of eight per cent annual GDP growth on an average, made it clear that population stabilisation was a pre-condition for attaining the targeted levels of socio-economic development. "Among the Tenth Plan's 13 mandated objectives, as many as four relate to population issues. These are: reducing the percentage of decadal population growth from 21.3 in 1999-2000 to 16.2 by 2012, reducing infant mortality rate from 72 to 28 per 1,000 live births, reducing maternal mortality from the current level of 4 per 1,000 to one per 1,000 and increasing literacy to 80 per cent,'' Mr. Vajpayee said.

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