World’s population is expected to reach 8 billion in 2022. What does it mean for the world and India in particular? For World Population Day observed on July 11, Village Square spoke to Deepesh Gupta, the State Head of Office of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Rajasthan, to better understand various issues concerning equitable growth and family planning in India.
A world of 8 billion: Towards a resilient future for all – Harnessing opportunities and ensuring rights and choices for all.
Deepesh Gupta: World Population Day seeks to focus on the urgency and importance of population issues. It was established in 1989 as a result of the interest generated by the Day of Five Billion, observed on 11 July 1987.
The United Nations General Assembly decided to continue observing World Population Day to enhance awareness about population issues, including their relations to the environment and development.
This year the world’s population will hit 8 billion. Therefore the theme for this year’s World Population Day is “A world of 8 billion: Towards a resilient future for all – Harnessing opportunities and ensuring rights and choices for all”.
In an ideal world, 8 billion people means 8 billion opportunities for healthier societies empowered by rights and choices. But the playing field is not even. Based on gender, ethnicity, class, religion, sexual orientation and disability, many are still exposed to discrimination.
There are many advancements in health that have extended lifespans, reduced maternal mortality and child mortality, and given rise to vaccine development in record time. But progress is not universal. The concerns and challenges remain or have even worsened related to climate change, violence, discrimination.
To put India’s population into perspective, one out of every six people in the world is an Indian.
To achieve the Sustainable development Goals by 2030, India must harness the potential of its enormous youth (15-29 years) population, estimated at 27% of the total population, particularly young women and adolescent girls.
Deepesh Gupta: UNFPA is the lead UN agency for delivering a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe, and every young person’s potential is fulfilled.
UNFPA expands the possibilities for women and young people to lead healthy and productive lives. UNFPA has been assisting the Government of India since 1974 to provide family planning and health services, advance reproductive health and rights and improve maternal health.
To advance maternal health, UNFPA supports strengthening of delivery points in selected districts (Baran, Dholpur, Karauli, Sawai Madhopur, Jaisalmer, Sirohi, Udaipur), reducing maternal death and surveillance response and facilitating the midwifery initiative.
India accounts for around 23.3% women getting married before the age of 18 years
UNFPA launched Naubat Baja (a cloud-telephony based radio channel) to help adolescents, especially young girls, in hard-to-reach and media-dark areas of Rajasthan. The issues addressed by the initiative include adolescent sexual and reproductive health, menstruation and gender-based violence.
We also work towards including other stakeholders like mother-in-law and husband. If we don’t put all these pieces together it’s not possible to solve the puzzle. The mother-in-law and the husband still play major decision making roles vis-a-vis family planning. We cannot deny the social structures that are in place.
Deepesh Gupta: The SDGs cannot be attained without gender equality and empowering women and girls to realise their sexual and reproductive health. In fact, it is a key determinant to reduce poverty.
Early marriages pose a huge challenge. As per National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5), India accounts for around 23.3% women getting married before the age of 18 years. A teenage mother has 2.2 times higher risk of maternal and infant deaths. It is of utmost importance to eliminate unmet need for family planning, especially in this age group.
The other emerging challenge is the low participation of men in family planning. As per NFHS-5, 56.5% eligible couples in the country are using modern methods of contraception, 37.9% opted for female sterilisation compared to only 0.3% for male sterilisation.
Family planning is still considered a woman’s responsibility. We really need to expand our strategy with respect to male participation. Participation of men and young boys is very weak in India. We have policies, but somehow our programmes fail to include this population.
This huge disparity requires our attention, and there must be efforts to improve male participation in family planning.
In Rajasthan, the Total Fertility Rate (TFR), i.e., the average number of children born to a woman in her lifetime) stands at 2.0 as per NFHS-5 which is below the replacement fertility level of 2.1. This is a significant achievement for Rajasthan with a decline from 2.2 in 2015-16.
Overall socio-economic development of the state, greater access to education, healthcare and more specifically family planning services in Rajasthan, have resulted in this decline. However, there still exists an unmet need for family planning with inter-district disparities which need to be addressed.
Deepesh Gupta: In an ideal world, 8 billion people would mean 8 billion opportunities for healthier societies, empowerment by rights and choices. But the problem is, the playing field is not even. Based on gender, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, disability, many are still exposed to discrimination.
However, India has made significant achievements too. Poverty reduction, incredible achievements in healthcare, advancements in technology, decline in infant mortality rate, even the framework of the SDGs say quite a lot about India.
At UNFPA, one of the transformation goals is zero unmet need for family planning and contraception choice. The moment you say family planning, you exclude a lot of groups. We only think about married couples and never go beyond the binary. We do not include a rights based approach to it. Therefore, people from disadvantaged groups who are most vulnerable, marginalised, single and young get left out.
We want to ensure that everyone gets to exercise their right and have access to contraception.
