Get sterilised and you might win a car

The posters when they are broadly translated read: "Small families are happy families."

"Especially those that can all fit into their new car," the unwritten subtext might read.

In a novel effort at countering India's perennial problem of rampant population growth, one district in rural Rajasthan is offering prizes, including a new car, for people – read women – who undergo sterilisation in government clinics.

The posters plastering Jhunjhunu explain: every person who gets sterilised in the next three months gets a ticket in a raffle to win a Tata Nano – at $3000 billed as the world's cheapest car – or one of handful of motorbikes, TVs or food blenders. It's not sophisticated, but it's bringing them in.

Rehka Soni, 28, gave birth to her third child, her second son, just six weeks ago.

She was one of 18 who attended for the operation at the mobile camp set up in her village this week, a sixfold increase on the last sterilisation round here.

"I'd already decided with my family to be sterilised after my third child, but I was made aware of this lottery through the newspaper ... so it brought my decision forward," she told the Herald through her mother-in-law Gyanvati.

"I want to give a good education to my children; we have sufficient [resources] for three children, but not more."

Concerned that a target of 21,000 sterilisations for the year was slipping away, the chief health and medical officer for Jhunjhunu district, Sitaram Sharma, devised the competition, hoping it would attract 6000 new patients during the traditionally quiet rainy months.

"Already we are seeing results. It has been only a few days, but people know about the lottery, and they are positive. It is having a strong effect."

But India's population problem is not one just discovered. The government's first "family planning policy" was introduced in 1950, shortly after independence, but little in practice has checked the country's growth in the decades since.