# Introduction

The governments of southern Asian countries took pioneering steps initiating national family planning programs about three decades ago, but, except in Sri Lanka, their success in increasing contraceptive use and reducing fertility level has generally been much lower than expected in five-year plans. There are, however, small pockets in these countries where special projects-mosty nongovernment-have succeeded in making significant dents in contraceptive prevalence and fertility. Often these are service-oriented projects with little or no research component which can generate the data nece-,sary to analyze and evaluate their impact. Matlab Project in Bangladesh is well-known internationally because of its remarkable success in an adverse environment and also for the exhaustive documentation and analysis of its success. There are other projects in southern Asian countries which claim greater success but most of them are limited in size and lack adequate documentation. A review of the relevant literature on southern Asia shows that the Kundam Project in India, which although not so well-documented as the Matlab Project, has attained a significant level of success with strategies different from those of the latter.

The main objective of this paper is to analyze the socioeconomic and demographic data necessary to establish the Matlab and Kundam Projects as examples of success stories in family planning under adverse circumstances and to identify the reasons for their success. The findings are likely to provide useful lessons for the national and NGO family planning programs in southern Asia and other regions of the developing countries.

# The Matlab Project

Matlab, a relatively inaccessible rural upazila (subdistrict) of Bangladesh, with poverty and illiteracy as widespread as in the country as a whole, has become well-known internationally in the areas of health family planning. The field experimentations conducted by the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B) in Matlab contributed significantly to the decline of mortality and morbidity from diarrhoeal diseases all over the Third World. The Centre began experimental research on family planning in Matlab in the mid-1970s and by the mid-1980s achieved a success which may be regarded as unprecedented for any region as undeveloped economically and socially as Matlab.

In an area comprising 70 villages (population about 92,000 in 1981) of Matlab (total population about 281,000 in 1981), the proportion of currently married women of reproductive age using modern contraception rose from less than 9 percent in 1977 to 46 percent in 1985 and to 57 percent in 1990-a significandy high level of prevalence for an area with such low socioeconomic level (Balk et al. 1988:41, 52; personal communication with Michael A. Koenig 1991). Ibis part of Matlab is designated by the ICDDR,B as the Treatment Area since it is being treated with special family planning and maternal-child health inputs since 1977 under an experimental project called the MCH-FP Project (often referred to as the Matlab Project). The inputs of the Matlab Project are in addition to those of the Bangladesh government's national family planning and MCH program.

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