The Indian family welfare program seeks to promote the two-child norm by offering couples the opportunity to choose voluntarily the family planning method best suited to their needs.
The single most important problem that India is facing now is the uncontrolled growth of population. In spite of availability of a wide range of contraceptives and mass media campaigns and IEC programs, the population control remains a distant dream to achieve.
The paper uses the National Family Health Survey (NFHS, 1992-93) data to examine the extent to which sex preferences have constrained the success of the family planning programme and inhibited the acceptance of contraception in the different states of the country.
Recognizing the urgency of containing its population, the Government of India has consistently increased the budget outlay for the family planning program with each Five-Year Plan from Rs. 6.5 million in its first five-year plan to Rs.65,000 million in the eighth five-year plan.
Inter-spouse communication, though not a new dimension of fertility and family planning research, has remained much less explored in the Indian context than any other correlate of contraceptive use and current fertility.
The preference of couples worldwide for a male or female child is an age-old phenomenon. In many developing countries, including India, the preference for sons is strong and has influenced fertility to a large extent.
Indian society consists of immensely varied political, social, ethnic, linguistic, religious and community groups, which, by and large, reside in villages, where poverty, misconceived religious notions, social customs, illiteracy, ignorance and superstitions prevail.
India's efforts to promote family planning have produced a significant increase in the couple protection rate (CPR) which has increased by about 33 percent during the last 22 years-from 10.4 percent in 1970 to 43.5 in 1992.
The rapid growth of population is one of the major problems facing the country today. India is at the turning point in its population development. As early as 1970, the birth rate showed a distinct downward trend, and continued to fall further to its present lowest.