The United Planters' Association of Southern India (UPASI) began to investigate the feasibility of a proposed deferred incentive plan in the late 1960s. This was not the 1st attempt to use incentives, but there had been little success in this area. Management was beginning to think that family planning efforts could not succeed, particularly in competition with the substantial maternity and child care benefits available, and the tendency of workers to consider management support of family planning only as a means to reduce the costs to the employers of these benefits. The No-Birth Bonus Scheme differs from previous incentive plans in that the benefit is delayed - a savings account payable on the workers' retirement - which depended on cooperation between workers and management. Any woman between the ages of 17 and 40 on an estate's roll could choose to join the plan. The employer would promise to credit 5 rupees each month to each enrolled women as long as she did not violate the rules. The rules aimed at 3 years' spacing between the 2nd and 3rd child, and a limit of 3 children for each woman.
This paper challenges the simplistic, though popular, view that the world must choose between programs for fertility control and socioeconomic development; between the Malthusian focus on population control and the Marxist one on exploitation control. In the developing world there is great need for achievement on both fronts through a broad range of policies and programs. It is inaccurate and injust to label social policies aimed at ensuring stabilization of world population size in the next century as neoMalthusian. It is also a fact that Soviet scholars now consider excessive population growth a problem for development planners. Accusations that birth control programs advocated for the Third World represent race genocide are based on erroneous thinking. Those who advocate contraception want to make it available to less privileged members of both more and less developed societies. It is not a neo-colonialist plot against the Third World: China herself has a population policy. On the other hand, the Roman Catholic Church, in common with some socialist countries, seeks to inhibit international action aimed at spreading contraception. Even though there is no optimal strategy for development per se, it is understandable that most developmental aid is viewed in terms of a desired model of social change by the donor countries. However, leadership by the U.S. in providing family planning assistance since the 1950s should not be construed as an imperialist plot. No group has the right to impose its preferences on the Third World. A rational approach towards development suggests that 1) developing countries should accept aid without undue concern of the motives involved in the giving of aid; and 2) the development assistance by donors should be increased, made more easily available, should be more multilateral, given without strings attached, and generally made less discriminatory. Birth control assistance will succeed only if general development assistance is redefined and restructured.
In 1974 the Government of Bolivia began a national program of free family planning services in 15 public care clinics as an integrated part of its expanding maternal and child health care services, which attempt to curb infant and maternal mortality and morbidity. Although the traditional view supports population growth as essential to national strength, a recognition of the negative effects of a population growth that outstrips the economy and undermines health and productivity is developing. Bolivia, rich in ores, petroleum, and potentially productive land, remains the poorest country next to Haiti in the Western Hemisphere, with an annual per capita income in 1970 of $180. Despite the major constraints which are expected to hinder the development of family planning services (the present inadequacy of the health care system, a shortage of trained personnel, special transportation and communication difficulties which are created by the complex terrain, an illiteracy rate of at least 60%, cultural conservatism along with the Bolivian fatalistic attitude toward childbearing, disease, and death and regard for children as a form of emotional and material old-age security) the National Family Center, CENAFA, indicates that its surveys show significant interest in family planning. His thought that there may be an immedicate favorable response to the program if services are at convenient locations and the cost is minimal. Commitments to this new national program have been received from UNFPA (United Nations Fund for Population Activities), the Pathfinder Fund, and PROFAM, Bolivia's first nationwide family planning organization, which was formed in March 1974.
Psychological barriers to family planning identified as recently as 1965 show every evidence of being dramatically reduced. There is, generally, an increase in the number of people who know about different contraceptive methods and who have a favorable attitude toward family planning. A gap (KAP-GAP), however, remains between the numbers approving of family planning and those actually using a contraceptive method. The KAP-GAP is the result of the emergence of new psychological variables that were not considered previously, and which have been generated by the family planning program itself. These factors are malaise (family planning publicity does not acknowledge the temporary discomfort often associated with birth control methods), fear (the effect modern contraceptives may have on health, personalities, sex life, and future generations), misinformation (poorly trained "motivators" resulting in family planning lore in developing countries based on half-truth, untruth, or exaggeration), mistrust (social differences between family planning program sponsors and the public results in family planning personnel being seen as manipulators with ulterior motives), and disappointments (large dropout rates indicate that family planning systems have delivered something that falls far short of the client's expectations.
Christian churches must work for social justice around the world. Policies and programs designed to curb excessive population must be accepted. The encouragement of large families by the Catholic Church was the right policy for pre-twentieth century life. The ideal of the small family and responsible parenthood is the right policy for today. The Catholic Church has always taught that couples must take into account many factors in planning the number and spacing of their children. It is this side of Catholic teaching, stressing the right and duty of conscience, which must be brought down to the parish level of teaching. The Church must respect the right of couples to choose the number and spacing of their children and not discourage large families if couples desire them. There should be no compulsion for poor individuals or poor nations to use family planning.
