Sex ratio is perhaps one of the most important sociodemographic indices which reflect the socio-economic and cultural ethos of a country, more so with reference to the status of its women.

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

The high female infant mortality rates (Miller, 1985), the practice of female infanticide (Krishnaswamy, 1988), the neglect of female children with regard to access to health services, nutrition (Sen and Sengupta 1983) and education (Mankekar, 1985), and the sexual abuse of girls (Bhalerao, 1985)

On the 16th of March 1998, at the final hearing of the writ petition filed by the All India Democratic Women's Association and the faculty of the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, the Drug Controller of India gave a written commitment to

We live in an era of paradoxes and contradictions - the reality was never so multifaceted, the issues never so complex. Everything around us seems to be melting and unfortunately the new forms acquired by the congealing of the molten mass leaves us little to rejoice at.