Health officials in India are offering attractive incentives including a car, motorcycles and television sets to men and women who volunteer for sterilisation in a bid to control the country's surging population.
Launching the scheme yesterday in Rajasthan's Jhunjunu, 155miles west of New Delhi Sitaram Sharma the desert town's chief medical officer was hopeful that these enticements would tempt at least 30,000 people to undergo sterilisation.
"We are confident that this idea will work well" Mr Sharma said of the three-month long scheme.
The inducements on offer contributed by a local charitable trust include one Nano, the world's cheapest car for the first volunteer, five motorcycles and an equal number of colour televisions and food blenders for disbursal amongst subsequent candidates.
Others would be paid varying cash amounts that would supplement the federal government's Family Welfare scheme which offered Rs1000 (£14.20) to those undergoing vasectomy and Rs200 (2.85 Pounds) to the one who motivated them.
Under a similar incentive scheme launched two years earlier around 150 men had received gun licences in exchange for vasectomies in Central India's bandit-infested Shivpuri region.
India launched its family planning programme in 1952 but the 19-month internal Emergency imposed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in the mid-1970s for personal political ends severely jeopardised it through forced sterilisation of thousands of unmarried young men and women and aged people.
Gandhi lost the general elections largely because of the forced vasectomies.
Thereafter, successive federal governments have floundered on ways to control India's population of 1.21 billion that is expected to overtake China's by 2030.
According to provisional figures of the latest census concluded in April India was more populous than Bangladesh, Brazil, Indonesia, Pakistan and the US put together.
It was home to 17 per cent of the world's population and had added 181 million people to its numbers since the previous headcount a decade ago.
The initial census figures also indicated a worrying decline in the country's child sex ratio, down to 914 females for every 1000 males, the lowest since independence 64 years ago which was causing myriad other social problems.
Source: The Telegraph
Launching the scheme yesterday in Rajasthan's Jhunjunu, 155miles west of New Delhi Sitaram Sharma the desert town's chief medical officer was hopeful that these enticements would tempt at least 30,000 people to undergo sterilisation.
"We are confident that this idea will work well" Mr Sharma said of the three-month long scheme.
The inducements on offer contributed by a local charitable trust include one Nano, the world's cheapest car for the first volunteer, five motorcycles and an equal number of colour televisions and food blenders for disbursal amongst subsequent candidates.
Others would be paid varying cash amounts that would supplement the federal government's Family Welfare scheme which offered Rs1000 (£14.20) to those undergoing vasectomy and Rs200 (2.85 Pounds) to the one who motivated them.
Under a similar incentive scheme launched two years earlier around 150 men had received gun licences in exchange for vasectomies in Central India's bandit-infested Shivpuri region.
India launched its family planning programme in 1952 but the 19-month internal Emergency imposed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in the mid-1970s for personal political ends severely jeopardised it through forced sterilisation of thousands of unmarried young men and women and aged people.
Gandhi lost the general elections largely because of the forced vasectomies.
Thereafter, successive federal governments have floundered on ways to control India's population of 1.21 billion that is expected to overtake China's by 2030.
According to provisional figures of the latest census concluded in April India was more populous than Bangladesh, Brazil, Indonesia, Pakistan and the US put together.
It was home to 17 per cent of the world's population and had added 181 million people to its numbers since the previous headcount a decade ago.
The initial census figures also indicated a worrying decline in the country's child sex ratio, down to 914 females for every 1000 males, the lowest since independence 64 years ago which was causing myriad other social problems.
Source: The Telegraph
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