Avabai Wadia: The lawyer who became India’s family planning pioneer

Throughout the Emergency, which was imposed from 1975 to 1977, the Indian authorities adopted draconian inhabitants management measures together with pressured sterilisation. Wadia condemned this, warning in opposition to coercion in household planning programmes and declaring that participation needed to be strictly voluntary. Household planning was starting to point out good outcomes however, she lamented, the Emergency “introduced the entire programme into disrepute.”