Mission Parivar Vikas

•  The government is planning to launch Mission Parivar Vikas to improve family planning services in seven states where the combined total fertility rate (TFR), or the number of children a woman has in her lifetime) constitutes 44% of the country’s population.
• The main objective of ‘Mission Parivas Vikas is to accelerate access to high quality family planning choices based on information, reliable services and supplies within a rights-based framework.
• This programme will be launched in 145 high-focus districts of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Assam.
• The target of the government is to reach the replacement level fertility goals of 2.1 by the year 2025.
• The key strategic focus of this initiative will be on improving access to contraceptives through delivering assured services, dovetailing with new promotional schemes, ensuring commodity security, building capacity (service providers), creating an enabling environment along with close monitoring and implementation.

Analysis:

• Recent government data shows that these 145 districts have TFR of more than or equal to 3 (56% of the 261 districts in the 7 High Focus States), and are home to 28% of India’s population, which is about 33 crore. These states are home to 22% of India’s protected couples and 40% of India’s couples with unmet contraceptive needs.
• These districts have a substantial impact on maternal and child health indicators, as about 25-30% of maternal deaths and 50% of infant deaths occur in these districts alone. Moreover, 115 of these districts (79%) have high percentage of adolescent mothers.
• However, in majority of districts, TFR is already at the ‘replacement level’ needed to keep the population stable. Urban fertility is now at levels seen in developed countries and in some places among the lowest in the world.
• According to recently released Sample Registration System data, the country’s total fertility rate (TFR) stood at 2.3 in 2013. TFR is the average number of children per woman if she lives to the end of her child-bearing years. In developed countries, a TFR of 2.1 is required in order to keep the population stable (ignoring migration). In India, this is around 2.3 due to higher infant mortality and a skewed gender ratio.
• Tamil Nadu has a TFR of 1.7 but so do Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi. Uttar Pradesh and Bihar continue to have the country’s highest TFR at 3.1 and 3.5 respectively. This disparity among states needed to be addressed.
• The trends in fertility have important implications for policy. First, social policy must shift focus from birth control to other issues like infant mortality. Second, long-term schemes like pension systems must anticipate a time when the old population will be expanding much faster than the youth population.
• Third, the provision of education, health and other services needs to prepare for the demographic turn. Population structure may appear to change slowly.

By: Vishal