In most of the rural areas in India, bringing humanity to the light of day is collectively and deftly managed by the dai along with other experienced women and the laboring woman herself.

It is a hard reality that the social-cultural web has conditioned Indian women not to complain but to cope silently with their health problems and live with them. CHETNA team members exposed to this reality, by listening to voices of women.

In recent decades, the most common means by which couples regulate fertility have changed from methods requiring control or cooperation by men, e.g., condoms, withdrawal and periodic abstinence, to those for which women bear primary responsibility e.g., virtually all-reversible modern methods.

This idea underlies traditional care during pregnancy. It may be true that in pregnancy a woman has more access to food and other things. But, communities have ways to oversee foetal growth and development. They subject women to restrictions and recommendations regarding diet and activities.

In the last decade, several international and national movements have focused their attention, on the long neglected areas of women's reproductive health.

The knowledge road to health has many pitfalls -and women in less developed countries and particularly those who are poor, illiterate and unemployed, face crucial tradeoffs when they attempt to fulfil their biological, social and other needs.

The success of a good planning strategy for the overall development of any society (population) depends upon two main factors.

India has an extensive network of hospitals and health centres with a large field staff in the government sector, which has been providing primary health care. Of late this infrastructure has been effective in delivering immunization services to the community.

The number of maternal deaths that take place every day in India exceeds the total number of such deaths that occurs in all developed countries in a month.

The success of a good planning strategy for the overall development of any society (population) depends upon two main factors.