D S Tyagi

Population Control: Simplistic Approach EPW's first piece on family welfare after the 1991 Census (integrating Family Welfare and Development Programmes' by T Padmanabha, January 18) has an ominous ring. The author rightly emphasises the need for integration of family welfare with development programmes and deplores functional isolation of the programme and "adherence to routine administrative structures" but his own innovation in the form of an "apex body to formulate policy and programmes" amounts once again to adopt a simplistic approach to a highly complicated problem. Such instant, simplistic remedies have been frequently applied in the past three decades and the result has been devastating