Baby Days Are Black

India is a country where, by the reckoning of nutritional experts, half the population fails to get even a single square meal a day. Five years ago Jawaharlal Nehru's government discovered with alarm that India's population, increasing at the rate of 5,000,000 a year, was outdistancing food production. Nehru launched a five-year plan to I) increase food, and 2) decrease births by government instruction in birth control.

The birth-control program became the province of Health Minister Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, a spinster, a Christian, and a devoted disciple of Gandhi, who taught that the only proper method of birth control is continence. "Harnessing science to ward off nature," said Miss Kaur, "is fraught with tremendous risk for the moral fiber of the nation." Therefore, by Minister Kaur's order Health Ministry workers taught only the rhythm method. Women were given beads to keep track of "safe" days (green) and "baby" days (black). But some women refused to use the beads on the ground that in India only cows wear that kind of bead; others were embarrassed by what neighbors might think; still others got the idea that merely moving the beads along each day was itself a guarantee against conception.

Last week in Lucknow, delegates gathered for the second all-India Congress of Family Planning, and gave birth to some anguished complaints. Dhavanthi Rama Rau, president of India's Family Planning Association, accused the Health Minister of spending only $500,000 of the $1,300,000 allotted for "family planning," and that chiefly on "research studies" on the anthropological aspects of birth control. "The Health Ministry refuses to allow government money to be spent on contraceptives [so that] advice on the use of contraceptives given to people attending maternity hospitals and child welfare clinics is completely wasted." Lady Rama Rau's solution: I) "Every clinic should have a stock of contraceptives to sell to those who can afford to buy them and to give away free to those who cannot"; 2) "the government should establish a factory for mass production of contraceptives."

In the shocked silence that followed her speech, one authoritative voice was raised in her defense. "The entire five-year plan will be nullified," said Lucknow University's Dr. Radhakamal Mukerjee, "unless each married Indian couple assumes responsibility of bearing not more than three children."

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