Contraceptive method skew in India 1992-2016

This paper analyses the contraceptive method skew in districts of India over more than two decades. The analysis reveals clear regional pattern in the method skew. In the northern and eastern regions, method skew is low and average but high or very high in the southern part of the country where factors such as poverty, education, social class, religion contributes little to deciding the method skew. In the central region, religious composition of the population has an impact on the method skew. In northern and eastern regions, poverty and education have an impact on the method skew. The analysis indicates that India has focussed on only one method - female sterilisation - to promote family planning, reduce fertility and curtail population growth. Increase in the prevalence of other family planning methods, especially, modern spacing methods, appears to be the need of the time. This requires improving the organisational efficiency and strengthening the administrative capacity of the official family planning services is the need of the time.