World Population Day: Call for concerted action on population stabilisation

NEW DELHI: With India accounting for 1.21 billion people, a call for taking concerted action to stabilise the country's population was made today on the occasion of World Population Day.

A Conference on 'Population Action: Towards a Better Tomorrow' was organised at Vigyan Bhawan, which mooted repositioning family planning, especially in high priority states, increasing participation from politicians and other ministries, increasing visibility around population stabilisation and also generating more awareness on family planning.

Planning Commission member Syeda Hameed, who inaugurated the conference, stressed the need to build consensus around population stabilisation to meet the development goals of the country.

The conference participants included policy makers and senior government executives from various ministries, donors, media and organisations working in the area of making family planning choices more available and accessible.

Issues related to global priorities and commitment to family planning, government policies for family welfare, inter -relationship between population and sustainable growth, improved and informed choices in family planning and the role of public-private partnership in population stabilisation was discussed in various sessions of the conference.

Earlier, the Jansankhya Sthirata Kosh (JSK), an autonomous body under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, organised a Walkathon in which more than 2,000 students from various schools participated to endorse their support for population stabilisation efforts.

The Walkathon was an effort to build momentum and raise awareness around issues like low female literacy, early age at marriage and early child bearing among a host of other challenges to be dealt with to address the issue of population stabilisation.

According to UN, India will overtake China as the most populous country by 2030.