IT was once thought that fertility below a level could not be achieved without changes in the material conditions of the people.

Sterilization is the most popular method of contraception in India. The 1992-93 National Family Health Survey found that of the 36.2 percent of eligible couples using any modern method, most (30.7 percent) had been sterilized and only 5.5 percent were using temporary methods (IIPS 1995).

India has the distinction of being the first country in the developing world to initiate a family planning programme-it later came to be called the Family Welfare Programme (FWP)-with a view to bring down the country's fertility level and contain population growth.

NUPTIALITY plays a significant role in determining the level of fertility and growth rate in a population. The experience of several less developed countries where population growth rates have recently lowered has well demonstrated this effect.

In this report, we propose new measures of wanted and unwanted fertility based on actual and wanted parity progression ratios, and we apply these procedures to NFHS data for eight states in India.

The quinacrine trials raise a host of questions regarding the safety of this method of sterilization and the methodology used to assess this.