The banners for the International Women's Day still flutter in the hall. The air is still thick with songs and slogans. Dreams in clenched fists and raised voices still float in the eyes. However, there is dead silence at Surinder Lotow'a's house. This is the happiest and luckiest day for him.

The Indian family welfare program is a centrally sponsored scheme, implemented by the State governments within the framework of elaborate guidelines and norms developed by the Central Government.

The issues of equality of access to health care has two related questions - access whom and access to what? They seem to have a simple answer: there should be access to health care services for anyone in need of it.

India's efforts to promote family planning have produced a significant increase in the couple protection rate (CPR) which has increased by about 33 percent during the last 22 years-from 10.4 percent in 1970 to 43.5 in 1992.

Indian society consists of immensely varied political, social, ethnic, linguistic, religious and community groups, which, by and large, reside in villages, where poverty, misconceived religious notions, social customs, illiteracy, ignorance and superstitions prevail.

Pregnancy outcome in any given community-the probability of a pregnancy terminating in a full-term, healthy live birth-is a powerful indicator of the health status of its women, and of the quality of health care available to them during pregnancy and birth.

India has made appreciable progress in improving its overall health status since the beginning of the century. The crude death rate has declined, but there is no sign of a decline in the maternal mortality rate. Also, most of the evidence relating to high maternal mortality rates is fragmentary.

Most studies of maternal mortality are hospital based. However, in developing countries, where many such deaths take place in the home, hospital statistics do not reflect the true extent of maternal mortality.

These services are provided through a large network of government as well as private Medicare institutions.

Viewed in retrospect, the development of hormonal methods of fertility control could be broadly divided into three main phases: (i) development of the oral contraceptive 'Pill based on synthetic ovarian steroid hormones; (ii) the demonstration that continuous oral administration of progestins in