It is important to understand the social, physical, and administrative environment in which the grassroots components of a health program function and provide services.

The stark white room is echoing with dreams. "I want to become a doctor... I am engineer... I want to become a nun... (this evokes a riot of laughter) I want to become a dress designer... My dream is to become a social worker ....

One of the purposes of family planning programmes in developing countries is to provide for the unmet needs of couples for contraception.

This report examines the linkages between wife-beating and one health-related consequence for women, their experience of fetal and infant mortality.

Contraception as a behavioral phenomenon has been the focus of many population researches, during the last half a century. In fact, explaining contraceptive behavior is a complex theoretical effort. Learning, motivation,

The British first discovered female infanticide in India in 1789. Jonathan Duncan, then the resident in Benares province was asked by the Bengal council to settle the revenues in the province acquired by the raja of Benares.

Acceptance and sustained use of family planning especially of modern spacing methods have generally been low in developing countries particularly in India. The use rate for modern spacing methods was only 6 per cent among the eligible couples in India in 1992 (IIPS, 1995).

A woman would prefer to prevent an unwanted pregnancy rather than having an abortion or carrying the pregnancy to term. No amount of legal or religious restrictions, social stigma or lack of access to professional care can stop her if she decides to seek termination of an unplanned pregnancy.

The paper uses the National Family Health Survey (NFHS, 1992-93) data to examine the extent to which sex preferences have constrained the success of the family planning programme and inhibited the acceptance of contraception in the different states of the country.