Towards a Women s Perspective on Family Planning

Towards a Women's Perspective on Family Planning Vimal Balasubrahmanyan THE paradox which characterises the Family Planning scene in India is this: On the one hand, women are the major targets of the FP programme with both messages and methods beamed intensively at them. On the other hand, the felt contraception needs of these target women, who predominantly belong to the lower socio-economic class, are not adequately catered to. In a country like India, women can be doubly victimised. By the patriarchal family which refuses to allow them to use contraception, and by the population controllers who make them the targets of unsafe contraception programmes. The latter aspect has been demonstrated in the disastrous IUD drive of the sixties and the mass laparoscopy camps of the eighties.