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Poor rural couples limiting families for some cash & lots of honour

NEW DELHI: Madhya Pradesh residents Reena Bai and her husband Shyamlal Maheshwari are role models for many in their village back home.

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Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 11

Madhya Pradesh residents Reena Bai and her husband Shyamlal Maheshwari are role models for many in their village back home. The duo today became the first couple from Sehore village in the central Indian state to win cash awards for limiting their family in the face of social pressures to bear more kids.

They have a boy and a girl and have since undergone permanent contraception to ensure no further expansion of the family. In doing so, they today became winners under a central scheme that seeks to promote “responsible parenthood” through cash awards and certificates of honour.

Health Minister JP Nadda personally presented appreciation certificates to eight couples, including the Maheshwaris, here today to mark the World Population Day. Called Prerna, the scheme covers only BPL couples in seven high-fertility states of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha and Bihar and requires couples to cross difficult milestones to become eligible for cash benefits.

Only those women are eligible who married after 2011 and had attained 19 years of age then. If an eligible BPL woman bears her first child after two years of marriage, she gets Rs 10,000 cash in case of a male child and Rs 12,000 if it’s a girl. If the couple has their second child at least after three years and one of the parents adopts permanent contraception, the Centre pays them an extra Rs 7,000 if their child is female and Rs 5,000 in case of a boy.

Simply put, the benefits add up this way — Rs 19,000 if the couple has two girls, Rs 17,000 if they have a girl and a boy and Rs 15,000 if they have two boys. “The idea is to promote responsible parenthood in Indian villages where it is a norm to marry girls early and pressurise them to have children immediately after marriage,” Preeti Nath, executive director, Jansankhya Sthirta Kosh (JSK), told The Tribune. JSK, an autonomous body under the Health Ministry, handles the government’s population-stabilisation challenges.

“More than anything else, it’s the honour of being awarded by the minister that fills our hearts with pride. When we go back to the village, we will show everyone what we got,” says Reena Bai, flashing the certificate of honour Nadda presented her.

Nadda said the government was working to achieve the target TFR (average number of children a woman will have in her lifetime) of 2.1 by 2019. “TFR has reduced from 2.9 in 2005 to 2.2 today and we plan to bring it down to below 2.1 by next year. We have identified 145 high-fertility districts in seven states where our plans are being implemented.”

Targeting seven high-fertility states 

  • MP, UP, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha and Bihar are the seven high-fertility states
  • Prerna scheme is for these states and couples have to meet difficult milestones to be eligible for cash benefits
  • Barring Odisha, all these states have couples increasingly opting to be Prerna awardees 
  • Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, HP, JK, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Punjab, TN, Telangana, Uttarakhand and WB have fallen below two child per woman norm
  • MP, UP, Bihar, Odisha, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh have TFR (average number of kids a woman will have in lifetime) above 2.2 (national TFR)

1.21 bn India’s population as per 2011 census — it is the world’s second most populous nation after China 

2028 Year by when the United Nations has projected India will outgrow China in terms of population 

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