The development of a population policy facilitates the scientific and speedy advancement of a family planning programme in any country. The importance of regulating rapid growth of population was known to humanity ever since Robert Malthus, the father of population sciences, wrote his famous essays on population as early as in 1797 focusing on the need for accepting family planning and beyond family planning measures. However, population policy per se developed only after the middle of the 20th century. Definite policy formulations for the control of rapid growth of population were adopted by the United Nations as late as 1974. Nevertheless, you may be happy to hear that a pioneering country, which adopted population policy as a part of developmental programmes, as early as in 1952, was India. Bot our policy developed into a comprehensive plan of action only from 1976.
Population policy outlines a series of specific measures for regulating fertility. It consists of immediate and long-term goals; several strategies like information, education and communication; interventions like mother and child health programmes; efforts for monitoring the programme and managing the administrative set up; contraceptive technology; research and development and promotion of the entire programme in terms of accessibility and acceptability. During the last four decades, several policy measures had been introduced to promote this programme through legal reforms as well. For instance, abortion was legalized in 1972 and age at marriage of girls and boys was raised to 18 and 21 years, respectively by 1978 in India. Now you may ask a question "Is it sufficient for India?" since the mean age at marriage was already 18 years for girls and 23 years for boys in India by 1981.
Of course, there is still a need to raise their age at marriage further. This has been successfully done in China, where legal minimum age at marriage has been fixed at 23 years for girls and 25 years for boys.
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