NITI Aayog is organising a National Consultation titled “Realizing the vision of population stabilization: leaving no one behind”tomorrow on 20 December 2019 at NITI Bhavan, New Delhi.

The consultative meeting beingorganised in partnership with Population Foundation of India (PFI) will bring together senior officials, experts and subject matter specialists to discuss ways and means of strengthening India’s population policy and family planning programmes. The recommendations from the consultation will contribute to a NITI Aayog working paper to help achieve India’s vision of attaining population stabilization, as voiced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 15 August 2019.

The working paper is expected to address key gaps in India’s family planning programmes. It will offer constructive recommendations to address regional disparities in outcomes by focusing on adolescents and youths, inter-departmental convergence, demand generation, access to contraceptive services and quality of care.

Some of the key recommendations expected to emerge from the meeting are as follows:

 

1. Increasing the basket of contraceptive choices, with greater focus on spacing methods and helping women make informed choices about delaying pregnancy and spacing between children.
2. Addressing social determinants of health such as age at marriage and sex-selective practices.
3. Strengthening quality of care, including counseling services, managing side effects and family planning support.
4. Increasing budgetary allocations for family planning, to align with the unmet needs of India’s young people who constitute nearly 30 per cent of our population.
5. Addressing existing socio-cultural barriers towards contraception by investing extensively in innovative behaviour-change communication strategies.
6. Treating population stabilisation and family planning as a national priority, fostering inter-departmental convergence and ensuring multisectoral participation and integration.

India, with a current population size of 1.37 billion, has the second largest population in the world. We are also at a stage where birth rates are falling but the population continues to grow due to the fact that more than30 per cent of the population is young and in the reproductive age group. Nearly30 million currently married women in the age group of 15-49 yearswithin this critical cohort of young people have unmet needs in family planning, which limit theirability to delay or avoid pregnancy by not having access or the agency to use contraception. Family planning is considered universally as the smartest development investment. For India to realize its sustainable development goals and economic aspirations, it is important to ensure that people have informed access to contraception and quality family planning services.

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