Although his suggestion was regarded as frivolous in some quarters, Azad was making a serious point. With the country's population increasing by 18 million a year, he urged couples to wait until they were 30 before they married and started a family.
"It's a great concern. We need to work at supersonic speed to curb population growth," he said.
India's approach to population control has been anything but consistent. Jawaharlal Nehru, the country's first prime minister after independence, considered a large population to be an asset for a poor country. That did not stop India introducing its first family planning programme in 1952, promoting the use of contraceptives, although it was not a great success.
By the 1970s, under Indira Gandhi, India was pursuing an aggressive policy of forced sterilisation for men with two children or more. That was abandoned when Gandhi was forced out and a more moderate policy of "Hum do, hamare do" (one family, two children) was adopted.
Advertisements were issued by Ministry of Health denoting the benifits of two children. One such ad was where a Jar full of tomatoes beyond its capacity is forced to be covered with its lid, the result all of them got squeezed. This funny but interesting ad did make an impact.
Now government is providing cash incentives to thousands of couples in India who agreed to put off having babies for at least two years after their wedding. It is the health officials attempt to curb the country's rapidly growing population.
While neighbouring China shows the first signs of relaxing its strict policy of one child per couple in the face of an ageing population, India is searching for a way of restricting the size of families as the battle over scarce resources grows.
The country's population stands at 1.2 billion and is expected to reach 1.53 billion by 2050. But there are not enough resources to feed this growing population.
A pilot project in the Satara district of Maharashtra has proved a success and other states, including Delhi and Assam, are now considering cash incentives.
Satara, funded by the National Rural Health Mission, is offering couples a reward of 5,000 rupees (£62) if they delay having a child for two years (70 rupees a day is a good wage in rural areas). If they wait another year, they receive a further 2,500 rupees.
The birthrate in the district rose from 16.5 births a thousand people in 2005 to 17 in 2007. The project initially attracted 977 couples, but that figure has risen to 2,366.
Satara has about 25,000 marriages a year and 80% result in the birth of a child wit in the first year. Only 155 couples on the programme left to have children.
The first cheques are to be issued on 15 August, with officials cautiously optimistic about a reversal in the birthrate, which is now down to 16.1 per thousand. Couples who take part are also eligible for family planning advice and free condoms.
Vivek Baid, president of the Mission for Population Control, said India could no longer sustain large families, and that it should now aim for zero population growth. "We feel that two children is a necessity, but that a third is not required. It is better for families to control their family size," he said.Indians have traditionally had large families, partly to counter the effects of high infant mortality. The preference for a male child has also led to large families as couples continue to try for a boy.
With more than India's population under the age of 25, having more children means no improvement in economic situation as it places them under greater financial pressure and exposes them to malnutrition and diseases and they do not have the money for education and clothes.
So it is always better to have less children and providing them with best facilities so that they prove to be an asset for nation's development and progress.
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