Context

• The NITI Aayog is going to draft a roadmap for achieving population stabilisation in collaboration with the Population Foundation of India (PFI).
• It is organising a National Consultation titled “Realizing the vision of population stabilization: leaving no one behind”.

About

About the Draft-

• The working paper is expected to address key gaps in India's family planning programmes. India, with a current population size of 1.37 billion, has the second largest population in the world.
• 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.
• The Aayog said that India is at a stage where birth rates are falling but the population continues to grow due to the fact that more than 30 per cent of the population is young and in the reproductive age group.

Key Recommendations-

• 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.
• Addressing social determinants of health such as age at marriage and sex-selective practices.
• Strengthening quality of care, including counselling services, managing side effects and family planning support.
• 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.
• Addressing existing socio-cultural barriers towards contraception by investing extensively in innovative behaviour-change communication strategies.
• Treating population stabilisation and family planning as a national priority, fostering inter-departmental convergence and ensuring multi sectoral participation and integration.

Need for such move-

• India, with a current population size of 1.37 billion, has the second largest population in the world.
• Nearly 30 million currently married women in the age group of 15-49 years within this critical cohort of young people have unmet needs in family planning, which limit their ability 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.