95 per cent women are aware about contraceptives: study

Indore: Nearly 94.5 per cent of the married women in India are aware of contraceptives, but only 50.2 per cent of them actually use it, a survey conducted in 21 major states has revealed.

According to 2014 baseline survey of Sample Registration System, 95.9 per cent of married women in West Bengal know about birth control measures, but 67.2 per cent use them. In Jammu and Kashmir, 83.1 per cent of women are aware of
contraceptives, but only 27.9 per cent of them use them. In Haryana, as much as 98.4 per cent married women are aware of family planning means but 52.6 per cent of them make use of it.

In Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, 95.3 per cent and 96.1 per cent women respectively know about contraceptives. But 30.2 per cent of these women use contraceptives in Bihar, where as the proportion in Madhya Pradesh stands at 64.5 per cent. "If the married women in such a huge number are aware of the family planning measures but not making use of them, it means contraceptives don't reach them," family planning and sterilisation expert Dr Lalitmohan Pant said here.

"So the government should make the means of family planning available to the women," he said. Pant, however, said that women undergo sterilisation procedure more willingly than men, who are reluctant due to fear or ego.
While the fertility rate in India is 2.3, the government wants to bring it down to 2.1 by 2020. The survey covered Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, J&K, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttrakhand and West Bengal.