According to a nationwide survey, conducted by the Office of Registrar General & Census Commissioner, while 94.5% of married women are aware of contraceptives, only half the population use it.

India is on course of becoming the world’s most populous country by 2050 with 1.6 billion people, up from 1.2 billion in 2011. So, there’s no doubt that education on contraceptives is increasingly becoming important.

While campaigns on the use of contraceptives over the years have familiarised many Indians with its benefits, not a lot of people seem to be using it.

Thee sample registration system (SRS) baseline survey 2014 released by the registrar general of India recently shows what percentage of married women use contraceptives across the states.

In most states, more than 90% of the married women are aware of the contraceptive usage. Haryana tops the list when it comes to knowledge about contraceptives– 98.4% of married women are aware of it. But among them, 52.6% practice it.

Women in Jammu & Kashmir and Tamil Nadu, though aware of contraceptives, barely use it. 27.9% married women in J&K and 37.3% women in Tamil Nadu practice it.

With 67.2% women using contraceptives in West Bengal, the state tops the list. Among other states where there’s comparatively a higher population of women using contraceptives are–Odisha (67.1%) Madhya Pradesh (64.5%) and Gujarat (62.4%).

The state that has the highest percentage of women who are aware of contraceptives and don’t use it is Bihar. While 95.3% of married women in Bihar have a knowledge of contraceptives, only 30.2% practice it.

To put things in context, Bihar has India’s highest fertility rate of 3.4 babies per woman, against the national average of 2.3.

Here are the graphs to show how many Indian women use contraceptives in India.

Source: Huffington India Report