National Population Policy of India was formulated in the year 2000 with the long term objective of achieving a stable population by 2045, at a level consistent with the requirements of sustainable economic growth, social development, and environmental protection. The immediate objective of the policy is to address the unmet needs for contraception, health care infrastructure, and health personnel, and to provide integrated service delivery for basic reproductive and child health care. The medium-term objective is to bring the TFR (Total Fertility Rate) to replacement levels by 2010, through vigorous implementation of inter-sectoral operational strategies. TFR is the average number of children each women would have in her life time.
National Population Policy pursues to achieve following Socio-Demographic goals by 2010:
• Address the unmet needs for basic reproductive and child health services, supplies and infrastructure.
• Make school education up to age 14 free and compulsory, and reduce drop outs at primary and secondary school levels to below 20 percent for both boys and girls.
• Reduce infant mortality rate to below 30 per 1000 live births.
• Reduce maternal mortality ratio to below 100 per 100,000 live births.
• Achieve universal immunization of children against all vaccine preventable diseases.
• Promote delayed marriage for girls, not earlier than age 18 and preferably after 20 years of age.
• Achieve 80 percent institutional deliveries and 100 percent deliveries by trained persons.
• Achieve universal access to information/counseling, and services for fertility regulation and contraception with a wide basket of choices.
• Achieve 100 per cent registration of births, deaths, marriage and pregnancy.
• Contain the spread of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), and promote greater integration between the management of reproductive tract infections (RTI) and sexually transmitted infections (STI)