India : population,economy,society

This book is the first comprehensive study of the relations between population growth and recent economic and social development in India. It is not a doom laden account of the population explosion'; rather it sees population growth as something that results from and accentuates the contradictory processes of economic development, and places the analysis in the perspective both of India's last thirty years and of contemporary developments in other countries. The author has worked as a professional economist and academically in or on India for over twelve years, and the book covers recent decades up to the demise of Mrs Gandhi's Emergency Government.

There are five interconnected sections, each with its own bibliography: the first introduces India's population history, and then examines as comparative material the historical experience of population change in England, France and Japan, and the current experience of developing countries other than India. The second examines India's contemporary demographic situation, including the nature of recent trends in fertility, mortality and migration, and projects the future population into the next century. It also contains an extended and original analysis of nutrition, malnutrition and causes of death, as well as the determinants of fertility and the economics of family formation. Part three analyses the family planning programme, including the 1976 National Population Policy and the issue of compulsory sterilisation. The fourth section considers how population growth has affected economic development in independent India and how that development has in turn affected population change, together with some account of likely economic problems lying ahead.