Health and Family Planning

Many national family planning programmes have two strands in their history: a concern for health, in particular the health of mothers and children, and a concern for the socio-economic effects of rapid population growth. Until recently proponents of family planning, feeling reticent about the latter, often tended to disguise their views by speaking in public mainly about the former. Both these strands have been present in India’s family planning history. The very first family planning clinic in India was opened in Bombay in 1925 by Prof. R. D. Karve who lost his post at the Christian Missionary College because of his ‘advanced’ views; but the first well-known public advocacy of family limitation was due to Pyare Kishen Wattal in 1916, to whose far-sighted book we have already referred. He put the argument in both health and socio-economic terms, as did the National Planning Committee of the Indian National Congress which, under Nehru’s chairmanship, also supported family planning. These early days were marked by one particular debate, namely how family limitation was to be achieved. Gandhi favoured abstinence; but those who supported contraception rapidly gathered strength.1