Demand for contraceptives rising among Muslims: Sachar Panel

New Delhi, Dec 24 (UNI) Muslim couples like those in other communities plan their family size in their own interest rather than for raising the community's share in the population for political or any other advantage.

In contrast to the common perception, there is substantial demand for fertility regulation and for modern contraception in the community.

These are part of the findings in the recently submitted report of the Sachar Committee, appointed by the Prime Minister on the Social, economic and educational status of Muslims.

While religion is an important element influencing the life style of a sizeable section of citizens, its impact on regulating fertility is not strong on Muslims.

For example, the use of contraceptive among Muslims, an overt expression of the concept of family planning, has been increasing in recent years nearing 40 per cent.

Over 20 million Muslim couples currently use contraceptives and this number will grow if quality and choice based reproductive health services are made accessible to them.

The Sachar study also debunks the misconception that there was any fertility norm for Muslims.

''There is no 'Muslims fertility' as such in the sense that the community in general cannot be identified as having a particular level of fertility,'' says the report.

Fertility varies among Muslims according to socio-economic status as well as individual characteristic and choice. There are also large regional variations. In the states with low fertility rates, the fertility of Muslims is also low, though higher than the average.

In fact Muslims in southern states have lower fertility than the average in the north in the north-central states.

The Committee, quoting the official surveys, says that Muslim population growth had slowed down, as fertility has declined substantially, clearly showing that the community was well into demographic transition.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Muslim population (in the post partition areas) was close to 30 million and grew rather slowly up to 1921 and later moderately as did the overall population.

In 1961, Hindus accounted for 83.5 per cent of the country's population followed by Mulsims, with 10.7 per cent. Other minorities had much smaller share--Christians 2.4 per cent, Sikhs 1.8 per cent and Buddhist and Jains less than one per cent.

By 2001, the share of Hindus had fallen to 80.5 per cent and that of Muslims risen to 13.4 per cent. This rise of 2.7 per cent points between 1961 and 2001 is a consequence of higher than average growth among Muslims.

The share of other minorities has remained nearly the same,though some small changes, a rise followed by fall, occurred among Sikhs and Christians.

The rise in the percentage of Muslims has been less than three percentage points over the four decades, that, is less than one point a decade.

By the end of the 21st century, India's Muslim population was projected to reach 320-340 million(In a total of 1.7 to 1.8 billion) and the share was lilkely to be 18-19 per cent.

However, the last three decades show that fertility has declined substantially in India and contraceptive practice has become common.

The population growth rate has also declined in the last decade for all comunities, including Muslims.

The growth rate for Muslims, as for the total population, is bound to fall further and eventaully reach a zero grow the stage.

There are strong indications that this could occur well before the end of the century, the Sachar Committee quoting various official data said.

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