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India cannot leave family planning to individual motivation: Indira Gandhi

In November 1968, Indira Gandhi delivered a speech at a conference on family planning in Chandigarh, calling on citizens to regulate the size of their families for greater prosperity and economic betterment.

It is a pleasure to be amongst people who are dedicated missionaries in the cause of the country’s future. Smt. Rama Rau and her colleagues do not need to be preached to on the virtues of family planning, for it is their pioneering work which has been largely responsible for the Government and the people of India recognising the vital connection between family planning and planning for the country’s prosperity.

Family planning is an accepted official policy in India. But our programme will not succeed if it remains only an official programme. There are some developmental plans which can be taken up and completed by a few for the many. There are programmes which can be completed by the Government. But family planning is truly a people’s programme. Its success rests on individual citizens. They have to be approached, persuaded, prompted and helped to practise family planning. The entire official machinery for family planning, whether at the Centre or in the States, is meant for this task of persuasion and assistance.

Recently, in agriculture, we have seen that the people’s willingness to adopt new methods has overtaken official effort. This might possibly happen in the family planning programme also. It should be proved to every village and to every family that a smaller, more compact family makes for better health and greater happiness for the family and hence for more prosperity for the village.

Since we took up family planning programmes three or four years ago with the urgency and earnestness they deserve, we have achieved impressive success in terms of numbers. But the success has been limited, as far as I can see, to certain pockets. The........

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