Poonam Muttreja, Executive Director – The Population Foundation of India, highlights how India has taken on the responsibility of family planning as a tool that can empower people by preventing the vicious cycle of unplanned and unhealthy families that is counteractive to economic growth
The theme for the World Population Day 2017 is ‘Family Planning: Empowering People, Developing Nations’. It is the fifth anniversary of the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning. This was the place of origin of Family Planning 2020 or FP2020, a community of leaders, experts, advocates, and implementers working together to expand access to contraceptives. Governments, civil society, multilateral organisations, donors, the private sector, and the research and development communities are working towards empowering 120 million additional women and girls. India too, as one of the most populous countries in the world, is striving to contribute towards this milestone.
To achieve this, India, along with many other nations, has taken on the responsibility to support the reproductive rights of several million women and girls to decide whether, when, and how many children they want to have. Recently, the government included three new contraceptives (injectables, Centchroman, and Progestin-only pills) into the basket of choice, the Supreme Court judgement on the Bilaspur tragedy was critical in highlighting the need for a rights-based approach to family planning, and earlier this month they accelerated the roll-out and implementation of Mission Parivar Vikas, a government scheme that focuses on 145 high fertility districts in seven states.
This year the theme is Developing Nations and Empowering People. This is an appropriate time to examine the grain of the family planning debate that has so far eschewed men, making it the sole burden of woman.
According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) III, male involvement in informed decision making on family planning is low with 22 per cent men expressing that contraception is women’s business. There is also an unequal share in the use of modern methods of contraception among women and men in India – among the 47.8 per cent who use modern contraceptive methods, 36 per cent women opt for sterilisation in comparison with the near negligible 0.3 per cent men, as per the recent NFHS IV factsheet.
It is time for us to stop referring to sexual abuse, violence and even family planning as women’s issues. They are as much men’s issues, they are society’s issues, they are moral issues, they are ethical issues, they are issues of social justice and human dignity.
India’s family planning mandate clearly needs to empower women, to assure them that the agency over their body is not up for question, but what often gets lost is the role of men in this effort. The frontline workers – ASHAs and ANMs are women in the public health system charged with family planning. Even though male sterilisation is a quick ten-minute non-invasive procedure with minimal risk, there is a greater percentage of women who choose to go under the knife and get sterilised to protect the mythical connection of a man’s strength and virility to his vas deferens.
However, we have evidence to show that men are not as elusive as they may seem to be. From independent evaluation reports of Population Foundation of India’s Main Kuch Bhi Kar Sakti Hoon, an edutainment programme that was aired on Doordarshan and All India Radio we have found that men can and should be mobilised. Data shows that 48 per cent of the audience that tuned in to the show were men, and there are real-life examples like that of the men of Chhatarpur, Madhya Pradesh who were inspired by the show. These are men who were habitual wife-beaters who have now become empathetic partners; men who insisted on a boy child have opted to undergo vasectomy after two daughters.
In another positive step, the state of Uttar Pradesh has recognised this gap and implemented a unique innovation that employs male family planning mentors. His role and responsibility will include dispelling the myths around non-scalpel vasectomy while also popularising the procedure and to be a depot holder for condoms.
We live in a society that thrives on the intermingling of cultures and a flow of ideas that move as naturally as the currents, where technological advancements make degrees of separation irrelevant, and where partnerships and communities are created towards common humanitarian goals. This World Population Day, India has to recognise that men along with women are ready for a change and want to be free of the drudgery of an unplanned, unhealthy population. The energy is palpable and we need to unite for the cause of a healthy people and better opportunity, of women’s empowerment, and of equality.