Experts Criticize India for Emphasis on Sterilization

Population experts on Monday criticized India’s birth control policy for its focus on sterilization and said that the country’s mushrooming population may become the world’s largest in the 21st Century.

India, one of the first Third World countries to decide it needed to check its growth, has had a family planning program since 1951.

But stifling bureaucracy and central planning has hampered implementation, said a study made public by the Washington-based Population Crisis Committee.

India’s estimated population of 883 million is growing about 2% annually, compared to a U.S. growth rate of 0.8% and 1.5% in China, which has a population of about 1.2 billion.

At those rates, the report said, India’s population will surpass China’s in the early decades of the next century.

Although the average number of births for Indian women has fallen from six to four, the committee said India’s goal of reaching two births per woman by the end of the century is unrealistic.

The average today is 2.5 in China and two in the United States.

India has stressed female sterilization because it is easier to monitor than temporary contraception methods. Also, many rural Indian women are illiterate and do not understand how to use birth control devices.

Younger women who don’t want to be sterilized often are unaware of other options. As a result, only 45% of Indian couples use contraception, far below the 72% in China and 74% in the United States, the committee said.

In a separate report, the Population Crisis Committee was more optimistic about China, which has been more successful in slowing its growth.