The most crucial problem of population policy in India at the moment is the problem of the lack of understanding of the reproductive decision making process. Reproductive rationality is a rather unexplored area. Linking personal choices with social ethics is one of the greatest challenges of our times. Traditional societies do not have this problem because individuals are closely tied to traditions and ego is only weakly developed. Modern societies too do not have this problem. They have developed institutionalized ways handling problems arising out of individuation and alienation, though even modern societies have not so far been successful in changing attitudes of people in the interest of society. The micro level and subjective calculations are against the change. Otherwise they would not be facing the problems of fertility declining to below replacement level and the subsequent problem of ageing. Social scientists must address this problem.

A consensus seems to be emerging that population planning issues should form a part of empowerment and emancipation. The National Population Policy 2000 rightly gives importance to education, immunization, lowering infant mortality rate, raising the marriagisable age, increasing institutional deliveries, information/counselling containing the spread of HIV/AIDS, promotion of Indian Systems of Medicine, and related social sectors programmes. Some of these issues were included in the earlier policies statements too but the shift of emphasis from national level to community level is the biggest achievement of the new policy. It is this framework of empowerment that should guide studies on and approaches to population policy and reproductive decision rationality. The issue is: how do individuals decide about family size or contraceptive uses so that the community supported ideas of well being are actualized by them? It is not an easy question to answer.