Two months after India became the second nation in the world with a population greater than 1 billion, Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and other government leaders will meet tomorrow to develop a strategy for slowing the nation’s population growth. Since the birth of India’s symbolic billionth baby on May 11, another 3.5 million children have been born in the nation. India is now home to 16 percent of the world’s people, and if it continues to grow at its current rate, its population could surpass China’s by the middle of this century. After the Indian government launched a mass sterilization program in the mid-1970s, many citizens became highly suspicious and fearful of contraception and sterilization, and the government is still trying to recover and convince people of the benefits of family planning programs.
