Indian health authorities are launching a countrywide campaign to measure the population's penis sizes. Their aim is to help condom manufacturers make better fitting products and thereby reduce wastage.
"Knowing the length and width of the Indian male organ will help bring down the 15 to 20 per cent failure rate of condoms due to spillage and breakage," Dr N C Saxena, head of the Indian Council of Medical Research, said. The council is co-ordinating the study which begins next January.
Council scientists said penis sizes differ across India and the data would be collected in a scientific method in which the length and width of each penis when fully erect will be recorded by digital camera.
Each centre across the country will identify 300 volunteers, mainly relatives of patients admitted to hospital. The study, for which the federal health authorities have sanctioned £16,900, will attempt to map the size of the average Indian penis.
Distributing condoms is the mainstay of India's family welfare programme. This is an effort to help check the country's burgeoning population which touched one billion two years ago and is projected to overtake China's by 2020.
The health ministry stopped the free distribution of condoms in the late 1990s as many Indians believed that the handouts were of suspect quality. They are now sold for 0.15 pence 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 a silicon oil difficult to melt off.
Officials said around 450 million condoms, almost half the total number produced every year and distributed free of cost earlier, were also used to plug radiator leaks in vehicles or died to be sold as balloons to children.
Every hour India adds 1,815 people to its population, and 15,678,000 each year, a figure nearly equalling Australia's total population.
