The burden of family planning in India lies on the woman

Unlike tubal ligation, which is performed in women, vasectomies are reversible but men in India are hesitant to do it, thinking it will affect their virility. — AFP

Occasional screams sounded from the operating theatre in a rural Indian clinic as a heavily sedated woman named Kajal waited to have her tubes tied, long the country's preferred family planning method.

"The anaesthesia must not have kicked in," one healthcare worker said outside the facility in the northern village of Bhoodbaral, where a line of women in colourful headscarves waited to undergo the invasive, and sometimes risky, 50-minute procedure.