NITI Aayog Draft Roadmap to stabilise population, family planning and birth rate

NITI Aayog is currently working on a draft roadmap that aims at creating a vision for the country to help stabilize population, birth rate and family planning. In order to achieve this, on December 20, 2019, NITI Aayog along with Population Foundation of India organized a consultative meeting with senior officials, subject matter experts. The meeting discussed ways and means to strengthen India’s family planning programmes and population policy. It will also contribute to NITI Aayog’s working paper on India’s vision on attaining population stabilization.

Highlights

The draft will help address key gaps in family planning programmes in the country. It will also help address regional disparities focusing on inter-departmental convergence, adolescents, youths. The think tank is to provide suggestions on budgetary allocations for family planning. It will align with the unmet needs of India’s young people and address their socio-cultural barriers.

The meeting also discussed making population stabilization and family planning a national priority. In order to achieve this the think tank is looking ways to foster multisectoral participation and integration.

Significance

India is the second most populous country in the world with population size of 1.37 billion. Currently, the country is at a situation where birth rates are falling but the population is continuing to grow. This is mainly because more than 30% of population is young and in reproductive age group. Therefore, a roadmap is required to stabilize the population growth.

Month: Current Affairs - December, 2019