Sunday, April 17 2005 10:56 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Darjeeling: After years of debate, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) has finally ratified the controversial one-child norm for India, telling the Union Government that population explosion in the country has assumed 'gangrenous proportion and that it needs immediate amputation'.

Taking a cue from the immensely successful Chinese model, the IMA passed a resolution at the end of its two-day central working committee meeting in Darjeeling, recommending that India must now have the 'guts to wake up and be bold enough to adopt the one-child norm'.

IMA national president Dr Sudipto Roy said on the sidelines of the meet that though the issue was one of the key points in the agenda of IMA meets for over two decades, it had been considered a 'harsh' means of population control till now.

''But a high level delegation of the IMA recently visited China and was impressed by the way the country has managed its population growth so effectively. The IMA strongly feels that India has no option but to resort to a one-child norm statutorily to ensure that it does not move towards total anarchy,'' Roy said.

The resolution said that the IMA was greatly 'concerned' that population explosion in India had not been given the priority that it deserved.

''We have long been exploring and debating the possible methodologies that should be adopted to check the population boom in India, which is estimated to cross China's population in 2010. These are times when policy makers will have to wake up and amputate the gangrene,'' president-elect of IMA Dr Sanjiv Mallik said.