The notion of quality in the public health system is becoming increasingly an issue for policymakers and planners in India. The Eighth Five-Year Plan identified the poor quality of family welfare services as one of the factors

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

In the absence of a basic questioning of women's status and role in society, birth control, abortions-and even maternal health care end up merely replacing an old set of traditions with new ones.

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.

Health is a major issue in the women's movement, along with the struggle for justice, dignity and equality.

In l995, nurses and doctors in many of the public maternity ward in the state of Tamil Nadu in India were routinely inserting IUDs immediately following childbirth and abortions, as part of the target-orientated family, planning policy.

Kipling was paying tribute to the Vicereine who established the Fund associated with her name. This was an organisation which employed medical women (or 'lady doctors') to run a chain of hospitals and dispensaries all over India and Burma.

Should we fear the destruction of our culture because a 30-year-old woman from Chandigarh plans to `rent' her womb?

The International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo in 1994 reiterated the need for appropriate health care services that will enable women to go safely through pregnancy and childbirth and produce a healthy infant.

On the World Population Day this year, there were two new features which are welcome: the first is the concern for environment in the context of population growth; and the second is the candid admission by the Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare that we must get rid of the tyranny of fami