Where the Name DKT Come From?

DKT International was named in honor of D.K. (Deep) Tyagi.  Mr. Tyagi was the assistant commissioner of family planning in charge of public motivation and education aspects of India’s family planning program until he died of cancer in 1969 in New Delhi.  He was only 41 years old but had already made a major contribution to his country’s family planning effort.

It was he who was largely responsible for the design and dissemination of a massive communication program that brought awareness and knowledge of family planning to hundreds of millions of Indians.  He began his work at a time (1966) when modern contraceptives methods were virtually unknown in rural India.  His success in saturating the country with simple, attractive messages and designs (including the Red Triangle, which is now in use in several other countries) overcame age-old communication barriers and greatly increased public awareness of birth control.

As an Indian with close ties with his own village in Uttar Pradesh, he saw a basic incongruity between national family planning goals and traditional aspirations of rural Indians and his work did much to bridge this gap.