Condom with your coffee sir?

India's Health and Family Welfare Ministry has started a countrywide campaign to contain a burgeoning population and provide protection against contracting AIDS by demystifying the condom and encouraging its use.

It plans to set up condom vending machines at airports and public toilets and convince restaurateurs to distribute them free after meals along with the traditional betel nut and aniseed normally served as a digestive.

India's population rises by 20 million annually and it is set to overtake China as the world's most populous nation by 2020. Only 40 per cent of 145 million in the reproductive age group practise contraception.

India started its family planning programme in 1952, but the 19-month internal emergency imposed by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in the mid-1970s severely jeopardised it through forced sterilisations. Succeeding governments were forced to abandon any aggressive population control measures and even renamed the Ministry of Family Planning as the Family Welfare Ministry.

The Health Ministry, meanwhile, had stopped the free distribution of condoms, as many Indians believed that any handout was of suspect quality. They are now sold for 10 paise (0.5p) each.

Measures have also been taken to end the misuse of condoms by toy-makers who were melting them down to recover the high-quality latex to make a variety of things. Condoms are now lubricated with silicon oil which is difficult to melt off.

Officials said around 450 million condoms, almost half the total number produced every year and distributed, were also used to plug radiator leaks in vehicles and were dyed and sold as balloons to children.