I-Pill: let's talk about family planning

"Had I known my wife had forgotten her birth control pills, I would've been careful last night."

"My husband and I are worried our family planning method might have failed last night."

Now what to do? The ad copy explains: Take the I-pill - an emergency 'day after contraceptive pill.

You can't miss the hi voltage campaign Cipla has unleashed for its product. What's interesting is how safe the advertiser has kept his communication. Husbands and wives, birth control and family planning. You know - we Indians have sex only when married and more so use contraception because producing another child into this world would mean additional burden to the nation.

OK, seriously, words like 'family planning' disappeared from our vocabulary approximately two decades ago, along with slogans like 'hum do, hamara do'. The inverted red triangle which was everywhere you turned when I was a kid has been banished.

Heck, we're no longer ashamed of our billion plus population but flaunt is as a dhinchakly large consumer market.

But getting back to the i-pill you can see why the advertiser is treading soo..o cautiously. He wouldn't want to be accused of corrupting our Indian youth and so on and so forth.

Indian Express reports:

As the revelries of Navratri draw closer, condom once again has become the bad word. While the NGOs working for AIDS control are steering clear from condom promotion programmes that they usually launch during the festival, the Bajrang Dal has said it will not tolerate any condom promotion or HIV/AIDS awareness programmes around Garba venues this time.

Talking to Newsline, an NGO worker, on the condition of anonymity, said they used to put up stalls at various Garba venues to create public awareness about HIV/ AIDS. This time, however, they will not do so, he added.

“Last time, some activists claiming to represent the Hindus, had beaten up NGO workers in Baroda during Navratri while they were distributing condoms,” the NGO worker said, adding that they have decided against carrying out overt intervention programmes this season. “We will carry out one-on-one intervention programmes instead, and supply condoms to hotels and guesthouses” he said.

Wonder whether the dals will stake out these venues as well!

According to a pharmacist quoted in the report, "sale of condoms rise by about 70 per cent during Navratri". And this year I am sure the I-pill will rock as
well.

"After iPod, I-pill gains popularity with youth", says Midday:

Alka Kumar, a consulting gynecologist at Gurunanak hospital in Bandra, says, “This product is a boon for married women not planning to conceive. But it may be misused by the youth especially during Navratri when unmarried pregnancies go up.”

The reason for all the action around Navratri is related more to opportunity than anything else. A lot of young people, esp girls, are allowed to stay out late. Dressed in sensuous chaniya cholis and whirring to the dandiya beat , hormones are bound to get into a tizzy. Pehle hota tha, ab bhi hoga. Instead of a botched abortion, many a young woman will opt for an i-pill.

But the two messages "prevention of pregnancy" and "prevention of HIV/ sexually transmitted diseases" have become independent of each other. The i-Pill can help with the first bit but do nothing for the second.

It would be terrible if young people decide to adopt the convenient route: Condom nahi hai? Koi baat nahin - you can always use the i-Pill. So let's go ahead anyways.

That's not what the advertiser has intended, but I bet a lot of folks will interpret it that way. If we accept that the i-Pill will be used by unmarried guys and girls, we can address this issue.But hello, yeh hai India. We will have to continue the charade and keep promoting 'family planning'.

Why not bring back the red triangle as well? Dunno - it just makes me nostalgic :)