Patna: Health authorities in Bihar are gifting packets of condoms and contraceptive pills to migrant workers leaving for their homes after completing the 14-day mandatory stay at the state-run quarantine centres believing the move will check a current population boom. The state has the highest fertility rate in India at 3.4 children per woman, and the officials blame the migrants for the population growth.
Authorities said they have noticed a peculiar trend of a sudden rise in institutional deliveries in the nine months after March and November every year in the state. This has been taking place primarily because millions of migrants return home from the cities to spend times with their families during the key Indian festivals of Holi, Diwali and Chhath. Holi falls normally during March whereas Diwali and Chhath are celebrated during October/November.
“We are distributing condoms and contraceptives since we have noticed a big rise in institutional deliveries in the government hospitals probably nine months after March and November when a huge number of migrant workers return homes,” state Health Society’s executive director Manoj Kumar told the media. According to Kumar, the number of institutional delivery cases curiously goes down in the preceding and following months.
According to an official report, more than 1.46 million migrant workers who returned from various Indian cities have been kept at the state-run quarantine centres. Of them, over one million migrants have already returned home after completing a 14-day stay at the 11,167 quarantine centres while 429,174 people are still staying at these centres.
Health officials said the migrants leaving for home have been further advised for a seven-day home quarantine and hence there are chances of a population growth. “So, we are counselling them about the birth control and also handing them contraceptives to keep the population growth under check,” said a health official adding this initiative had nothing to do with Covid-19.
According to them, each migrant worker is being given two packets of condoms and some strips of contraceptive pills at the time of leaving the quarantine centre but those who failed to get them will get them delivered at their home by health workers.
“Since millions of workers have returned homes, we have launched this initiative to keep the state population growth under control. We hope the initiative will have positive results,” Dr Utpal Das, a doctor associated with the State health society, told the media. The state health society has been established to strengthen the technical/management capacity of the Directorate of Medical and Health Services in the state through various means, such as recruitment of individual/institutional experts from the open market and mobilize financial/non-financial resources for completing/supporting the National Rural Health Mission activities in the state.
An official report puts the number of returning migrant workers at over two million, citing their reservation in Shramik (Labour) via special trains which arrived in Bihar in the past month but according to unofficial reports, more than three million have returned to the state. Reports said a good many of them returned by road arranging their own trucks, tractors, bicycles and several on foot.
