According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), reproductive health means a total well-being in all aspects of reproduction, i.e., physical emotional, behavioural and social.

Therefore, a society with people having physically and functionally normal reproductive organs and normal emotional and behavioural interactions among them in all sex-related aspects might be called reproductively healthy.

India was amongst the first countries in the world to initiate action plans and programmes at a national level to attain total reproductive health as a social goal.

These programmes called 'family planning' were initiated in 1951 and were periodically assessed over the past decades. Improved programmes covering wider reproduction-related areas are currently in operation under the popular name 'Reproductive and Child Healthcare (RCH) programmes'.

Creating awareness among people about various reproduction related aspects and providing facilities and support for building up a reproductively healthy society are the major tasks under these programmes.

The present population growth rate in India is alarming. Such an alarming growth rate could lead to an absolute scarcity of even the basic requirements, i.e., food, shelter and clothing, in spite of significant progress made in those areas.

Following are some important ways to overcome this problem

(i) By raising marriageable age of the female to 18 years and that of males to 21 years.

(ii) By promoting use of birth control measures to motivate smaller families.

(iii) By providing incentives to couples with small families.

(iv) By educating people about consequences of uncontrolled population growth.