Family Planning in India: Success or Failure?

India's population growth has been a cause for concern for the government for a very long time. After independence, in 1949, family planning program was formed in India. In the year 1952, like the other developing countries throughout the country, the first family planning program was started in India. Initially it includes birth control programs and later its departments come under mother and child health, nutrition and family welfare. In the year 1966, the Ministry of Health created a separate department of family planning. The then ruling Janta Government had formed a new population policy in 1977. The government said that this policy should be accepted voluntarily rather than compulsion. This government changed the name of family planning department to family welfare program.