Sculpting Population Policies: Some Issues

Abstract

The Singamma Sreenivasan Foundation, Bangalore, and the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, had organised a Colloquium on Population Policies in Bangalore on 19 and 20 November 2000. Com prising academics, policy makers and activists from the southern states, this Col loquium yielded a rich corpus of ideas on issues related to health and population. In order to disseminate these further, to stimulate informed opinion and a wider public debate, and indeed to influence policy makers at the Centre, a Second Colloquium on Population Policies was organised in New Delhi on 21 and 22 April 2001. In addition to academics and activists from the health movement, the Colloquium also involved a wide range of women's groups, especially those seriously involved in health and population issues and dalit groups. This paper summarises the main threads of the discussion at the Colloquium. Briefly describing the National Population Policy 2000, the paper analyses the population policies of five Indian states that were the focus of the discussions at this Colloquium. Following this is a summary of the extraordinarily rich discussions that ensued.