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Encounter with Population Crisis Lecture Series Four |
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~MILY PLAN~N(iJpfjNDATlON
NEW DELHI
(Ju!y24~1992)
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Encounter With
PopuIadon Crisis
FOUR
Dr Asok Mitra
on
POPULATION STABILISATION STRATEGIES
IN INDIA: AN ASSESSMENT
FAMILYPLANNING FOUNDATION
NEW DELHI
(July 24, 1992)
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This is the fourth publication under the series: "Encounter with
Population Crisis"which has featured some eminent persons advocating
vigorous population policies to ensure human survival.
The Family Planning Foundation had started a lecture series in
1990in order to draw attention of nation's elite and policy planners to
critical aspects of the population problem. So far, the Nobel Laureate,
Dr Norman E Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution world-wide and
Dr M 5 Swaminathan, an equally world-renowned genetic scientist,
have dealt with different aspects of the problem in their illuminating
lectures.
The third publicanon brought together important observations
and statements made by Mr J R D Tata in his various speeches and
writings during the last ten years. The fourth volume presents the 1992
lecture, delivered by Dr Asok Mitra. It is a very significant attempt at
critical appraisal of the demographic situation as well as an evaluation
of the effectiveness of strategies adopted in India to deal with high
fertilityand rapid population growth in the contemporary socio-economic
context.
-
A distinguished civil servant with a wide range of interests,
Dr Asok Mitra has been a long-time objective observer of the popula tion
and development scene in India and is, therefore, ideally suited to make
a fresh assessment of the current population stabilisation strategies. His
well-documented lecture poses several questions about our performance
and drawing upon historical perspective, throws up quite a few valuable
ideas.
HARISH KHANNA
Executive Director
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"In fact, all thinking people must wonder what it can do to a country
and to an economy which is yet under-developed!"
POSING THE PROBLEM: MR J R D TAT A
3
1 have great pleasure in introducing to this august audience
Dr Asok Mitra, our venerable speaker of the day as well as
the subject, viz. "A Critique of the Population Stabilisation
Strategies in India." Besides being one of our top administrators
and thinkers,Dr Mitra is an authoritativescholar ofthe demographic
trends in the country. It is, therefore, ourprivilege to listen to him
on such an important subject.
A few days ago, it was announced that the world's population
had alread y reached 5.6billion. This isan ominous portent insofar
as it relates to India for, I am told, we as Indians are doing the
maximum damage to the population profile of the world!
It was in 1951that for no great rhyme or reason I happened
to talk in a speech of the serious population problem India was
faced with and proposed the setting up a Population Commission.
Probably, at the back of my mind was the feeling that ours was a
poor country with a burgeoning population, and if the population
went on increasing, poverty would also increase. I have always
thought that I was perhaps the first to ring the alarm-bell.However,
I am now made aware that the Maharaja of Mysore had done so
about two decades earlier. Anyway, ever since then, I have been
getting increasingly worried, nay, obsessed with our almost
exploding population. In fact, an thinking people must wonder
what it can do to a country and to an economy which is yet under-
developed!
.
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"But what is more terrifying is the fact that we are adding 17 million
to our population every year, say, the total population of
Australia and that in itself is mind-boggling. "
Now let me share with you a forty-year old secret of mine. I
4
called on the Prime Minister to drawhi~ attention to the points I
had made in my speech. But I was not prepared for the kind of
response I got. In an utterly monosyllabic way, he snubbed me
saying "Nonsense!" Seeing me taken aback, the Prime Minister
kind ofassuaged my feelings by saying, "A large popula tion is the
greatest source of power for any nation". At that time, I did not
have the courage to differ from him. But today I can say that I have
no pride in being tne citizen of such a powerful nation! For, I
believe in the power of a prosperous population - a creative
population, not an indigent one.
In 1951, India's population was yet around 350 million. In
1991the year oftheCensusi which ~ans,during the last 40years,
it became 844 million. The figure is really mind-boggling, nay
absolutely terrifying. But what is moreterrifyingis the fact that we
are adding 17million to our population every year, say, the total
populatiort of Australia and that in itself is mind-boggling.
Now how to get out of it? To my mind, the soiution lies in
alleviating the plight of women and eradicating the overwhelming
poverty they live in. Our women have been greatly deprived of
what they should have had - not today, not. 40 years ago, but
perhaps for ever, that is, education and equal status.
No doubt today, women are taking to many professions and
many occupations but aren't they paying too much price for it in
a hostile environment? Too many children in the home and too
much work at the work-place take away much of their freshness
and charm. Still, why do I recommend equal freedom and
responsibility for women? I have the image of fisherwomen of
Bombay before my eyes. These lusty, limpid spirits are simply
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"We should be ashamed of the fact that women in India even
today are backward in education, in employment,
and in health opportunities "
primordial. But this is not the case with other group~ of our
women. We should be ashamed of the fact that women in India
even tpday are backward in education, in employment, and in 5
health opportunities, though I strongly believe that they are the
ones who are going to playa much more significant role in
shaping tile country's future.
I know that I am taking too much of your time and standing
between you and the learned speaker. But I must share a thought
and an experience of mine with you before I call upon Dr Mitra to
make his very learned presentation.
You are probably aware that I was born in~rance, in an
Indian family, of a French mother who was a remarkable lady.
And as I grew, I found myself close to many of the French families
around. At that time, the French too had large families, more like
us today.
.
But a great change has overtaken the French families since-
then insofar as their size is concerned. Today, like the rest of
Western Europe, they have come to have small families and the
parents are much more concerned about their children and their
future. Everything has become costly and children have become
really very precious if not an actual liability. Today, to give a
reasonably secure place to a child in the world costs a great deal
in Western countries and parents want to make every sacrifice
that ispossible to bring up the fewer children they have, in the best
possible manner.
When I see this, a question comes to me again and again:
Why has~' tthis happened in our country? Probably, the reason is
that awareness of the importance ofa small family is as yet loston
both our children alid their parents.
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"A Professor in his profundity tried to enlighten me by saying, 'They
have not thought of it because all of them want to go abroad and
many of them will not like to return.' [ said '[ don't
believe a word of it. [ hope you are wrong. ' "
From this point flows my unique experience. I often talk to
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young people both men and women -able and bright, drawn from
IITs and universities. Previously, I used to talk to them more
often. But now, I don't do so. Instead, I engage them in question-
answer sessions. It is a pleasure to listen to them talking with
knowledge, hope and confidence. But what has always struck me
is their apathy a~ut the population problem. So, at the end of
each session, I do ask them a question, "What do you think of the
population problem? How come you have talked of everything
else except this most important and intractable problem? Are you
not interested in it?" 1nd curiously enough, I get no response.
Many of them are in the marriageable age-group. Maybe some of
them are already married. Then why this colossal indifference?
A Professorin his profundity tried to enlighten me by saying,
"They have not thought of itbecause all of them want to go abroad
and many of them will not like to return." I said "1don't believe
a word of it. I hope you are wrong." I know of several Indian
families settled abroad, who are pining to return to India, if not by
themselves, then at the insistence of their wives.
The upshot. My question remains unanswered. I cannot
account for the reason of the general apathy towards population
problem which, in my view, is the nation's number one problem.
Gradually, however, I have come to the conclusion that they are
not concerned about it nor have they proper awareness of it
because their parents were indifferent to it. But as it has happened
in Western Europe, it is the parents who have to plant in their
minds the vital idea that to mak-ea child a responsible citizen, is
a.pretty costly affair, and therefore, theymust keep the family-size
managectbly small.
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I have probably taken much longer than necessary. But I do
hope that you and DrMitra will excuse me for my ramblings. And
I deem it a privilege of the first order now to ask Dr Mitra,to take
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the podium.
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f<
SPECIAL LECTURE: DR. ASOK MITRA
~ llow me to say how $reatly honoured I feel to be asked
~ to speak to this august audience. I deem it an even
.
greater honour that Bharat Ratna, Mr J R D Tata,
should have taken the trouble to come all the way from
Bombay to preside over this morning. When I received my
fonner colleague, Shri Harish Khanna's invitation of the 2nd
June I felt a little daunted. The. magic names of the two
previous speakers, Dr Norman E Borlaug and Dr M S
Swaminathan filled me with humility. I accepted the kind
invitation for two reasons: First, out of the great regard in
which I have held Mr I R D Tata for over fifty years. From a
distance, with awe to start with, in my youth, when I read
Gandhiji's approving mention that Mr Tata and Sir Homi
Mody had strongly repudiated Emmanuel Shinwell's facetious
remark at the House of Commons on. April 21, 1944 and
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"Incidentally, this address owes not a little to the insights
I gained thereby."
asserted that no economic development but its exploitation
and degradation was possible without a National Government
8 of India, and with affection and respect when I worked as
Secretary, Tourism and Civil Aviation in 1969; and secondly,
out of a sense of the debt I owe to Mr J R D Tata and the Family
Planning Foundation for the very handsome grant and facilities
Mr Tata offered to me, when I was still "Servingthe government
as early as the middle of 1973, to undertake a study of the
implications of population gro.wth in India. The proJect formally
commented in March 1975when I joined the Jawaharlal Nehru
University as a professor, and was completed in December
1977. The product was a two-volume study, bearing the title
"India's Population: Aspects of Quality and Control" and was
published in 1978. This occasion gives me an opportunity to
acknowledge to Mr J R D Tata and the Family Planning
Foundation the pleasure and satisfaction I derived from
undertaking and completing the project. Incidentally, this
address owes not a little to the insights I gained thereby.
I
Demographers and related scholars, including those
working for UNICEF in India, felt disturbed over an article
called "Human Entrapment in India" by a Dr Maurice King
of Leeds University, England. His article and responses to it
were publishe5i recently in three issues of the National Medical
Journal of India. Dr King expressed the right concerns, all
right, even to,the point that, if India does not take heed sharply
enough, she may well go the way of Ethiopia and Sahel,
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"This sounds but a step short of recommending the gas chamber for
unwanted babies or flinging them down coalmine shafts.
especially in Northern and Eastern India. I feel, however, in
the first place, that he defeated his purpose by being more
histrionic than Malthus himself. With his smart recipes and 9
Cassandra-like shrieks, he points his finger at UNICEF acting
the devil with its Oral Rehydration and Expanded Immunization
programmes for child survival. This sounds but a step short
of recommending the gas chamber for unwanted babies or
flinging them down coalmine shafts. Secondly, where he goes
really wrong is his rather naive assumption that a decline in
human fertility owes directly to a decline in infant and child
mortality.
King uses this assumption as a peg for his thesis that if
the birth rate does not continue to fall more rapidly and more
steeply, India will soon exhaust its eco-sustainability. This
point, too, is well taken although current perception in India
of this possibility is blurred by the fa<;t that a half-century of
static population between 1871 and 1921 at a very low level
compared to that of even 1951, failed to lift India out of utter
destitution under colonial rule. While since 1947, despite the
population having more than doubled, from a higher base
within a much denuded territory, India has been steadily
prospering in both agriculture and industry. And curiously
enough, the Malthusian checks of famine and pestilence, which
King invokes, have stayed away in the last half-century.
II
Talking of perceptions, let me attempt a short list of the
more negative and harmful ones which I suspect have
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"Yet, no thoughtful person would have the slightest doubt that the
city is the mother of all human invention and excellence,
organisation and enterprise, creativity and progress."
subterraneously operated on our national psyche to thwart
and even set at naught periodic attempts over the last one
10 hundred years at evolving a set of well-orchestrated, mutually-
promoting, long-term policies and action programmes for
desirable goals of population-size and quality, that would
accord well with our unfolding national goals of material and
moral progress.
An illustration from a cognate field needs only to be
mentioned to clinch my point. Most of our thinkers and leaders
have never ceased to extol the virhles of our traditional village
life and values while roundly condemning the evils of
urbanization. Gandhiji himself was fond of repeating that
India lives in her villages. Even Tagore, the iconoclast, ever
reaching out to the future, uttered an anguished cry: Give me
back the woods, take back this city. The message rang loud and
clear. The village is the heaven we should yearn for, and the
city the devil we had better shun. Nurture the village even if
that should be at the expense of the city. Yet, no thoughtful
person would have the slightest doubt that the city is the
mother of all human invention and excellence, organisation
and enterprise, creativity and progress. I myself would rather
suffer in a festering metropolis than thrive in an elysian glade.
This a.nomaly or conflict has merely to be mentioned to convince
the man-in-the-street that this is the kind of national psyche
that has put stumbling blocks in the way of a healthy, well-
balanced long-term policy and action programme for promoting
mutual nourishment of the city and the village.
Similar twists and turns in our national psyche seem to
have operated against the articulation and implementation of
a consistent national population policy. These have caused
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"People who advocated the Malthusian gospel were accused of being
pawns in the hands of an alien government, anxious to draw
a red herring across the task of regeneration.'"
infinitely more harm than, say, a dithering national urban
policy. For, of all areas of the most vital national concern, this
indubitably is the most crucial, now that all our national
11
resources, not least of which is our environment and eco-
subsystem, are under dire threat from the intolerably growing
burden of our population. Let us have a brief look at how one
mental block after another has operated in this vital area since,
say, 1890.
The Malthusian Society of India was formed around the
year 1890. Many of our' national leaders voiced the need of
curbing population growth. But the movement was countered,
not illogically, by equally powerful voices which accuseq the
government of failure to tame recurrent' famines resulting in
depopulation and devastation of extensive traCts of flourishing
husbandry and tillage. It was argued that anyldeliberate curbs
on population growth would further reduce India's human
and natural resources. The demand, instead, was for more
government effort towards fostering economic, especially
agricultural activity to make amends for what was then called
unBritish rule in India. People who advocated the Malthusian
gospel were accused of being pawns in the hands of an alien
government, anxious to draw a red herring across the task of
regeneration. This attitude running as a base-theme served to
subdue the Malthusian concern.
III
,
In the next comparable span of our history, between 1920
and 1950, India's population recovered from the blasts of
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"It is mostly overlooked that internally the USSR introduced certain
anti-natalist measures, right on the morrow of the
October Revolution of 1917."
recurrent famines and made progress towards a low two-digit
growth. The Russian Revolution of 1917 reasserted faith in the
12 infiniteness of man, his ability to conquer Nature and overcome
all obstacles to progress. This call was for reaching out to the
limitless skies through a radical restructuring of the means and
ownership of production. The triumph of equality and equity
would release unlimited energies for innovation and
achievement. Population growth presented no problem at all
for a socialist society. Marx was hailed as having thoroughly
demolished the 'plagiarist' Malthus, whose doctrine might
apply to the constraints of a capitalist society but not to a
socialist world. Marxist doctrine became the new gospel and
the rapid rise of the USSR confirmed Marx's appeal to what
now generally came to be known as the Third World. Malthus'
was the imperialist bogey which amused no one any more.
It is mostly overlooked that internally the USSR introduced
certain anti-natalist measures, right on the morrow of the
October Revolution of 1917. The State legalised abortion, blessed
contraception, banned institutional worship, religion and the
concept of marriage as a sacrament, removed the stigma of
birth out of wedlock, insisted that women should work equally
with men in all sectors for building up the Soviet Union, freed
woman from being tied down to nursing babies and child care
by compulsorily establishing creches at every place of organised
work, took responsibility for compulsory primary and secondary
education and health care and put all ethnic and social
communities and regions as equal. All of these measures had
pronounced antinatalist stances built into them. These gradually
put especially the domains of the Russian Federation on the
path to low fertility, b~~\\ ,left comparably untouched the high-
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"But the anti-nata list aspects were never as lustily publicized as
Marx's condemnation of Malthus and, therefore, overlooked
or slurred over by Marxists of the Third World."
fertility tracts of Central, Southern and Western Asia.
The effect of these essentially anti-natalist measures were 13
visible in the participation of women in all fields of enterprise
- not only scientific, cultural and technological but also in areas
requiring modem technological skills in blue as well as in
white-collar activities. But the anti-natalist aspects were never
as lustily publicized as Marx's condemnation of Malthus and,
therefore, overlooked or slurred over by Marxists of the Third
W orId. Soviet spokesmen never missed an opportunity up to
the early seventies in stressing at every conceivable forum that
the problem of overpopulation did not exist in Soviet society.
But internally, as I found during my visits between 1960 and
1982, Russian scholars in the Academy of Sciences were disturbed
over the marked differences in the rates of population growth
among the different ethnic republics, particularly between
those on either side of the Urals. This demographic hiatus
created growing tension from 1960 onwards artd ultimately
contributed in no small measure to the dissolution/of the Soviet
Union in August 1991.
IV
Although in the 1938 National Planning Committee
resolutions, he underlined the urgency of a well-articulated
population policy, Jawaharlal Nehru with his enthusiasm for
the Soviet Union and Soviet planning may have shared Marx's
contempt for Malthus' formulation on population. He might
also have shared his generation's hesitancy, with its background
of imperialist rule, in pitching on population growth as the
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"Stillearlier, my predecessor, Gopalaswami, had spoken
unambiguously of the dangers of 'improvident
maternity', one of the most vivid phrases
ever to be invented."
source of India's ailments. It speaks volumes for the foresight
and concern of the man, that it should have been Mr J R D Tata
14 who issued a clarion called as early as 1951 urging the setting
up of a permanent national population commission.
The 1961 Census produced unmistakable omens of a
runaway growth. Coale and Hoover in their book published
a little before 1961,had sounded warnings of such a possibility.
Still earlier, my predecessor, Gopalaswami, had spoken
unambiguously of the dangers of 'improvident maternity',
one of the most vivid phrases ever to be invented. Associated
that I was with the Family Planning Board and the Central
Population Committee, I could not help feeling that Nehru
possibly felt inhibited from unequivocally advocating family
limitation as the solution for certain obvious qmstraints in our
progress. Few people had greater knowledge than Nehru of
the priorities in the Soviet programme that had brought about
the revolution which Sidney and Beatrice Webb had called 'A
New Civilization'.
In fact, Nehru must have been much too aware that he had
neglected the vital priorities responsible for turning the social
soil as in Soviet Russia, and he had confirmation in the fifties
of what those priorities achieved in the People's Republic of
China. He himself had blessed these priorities in 1952 in the
<:ommunity Development Programme but had failed to insist
on their pursuit after 1954,allowing the movement to languish
and wither in the hands of Panchayati Raj. He must also have
been quite aware that without the fruition of these priorities,
which were the essential basis of birth control, mere insistence
on the mechanics of contraception would not work and expose
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" Chinese had the right to go full tilt at family planning as a quid
pro quo for the basic privileges the government had
universally ensured for every Chinese "
him to the charge of having betrayed the country to the
Socialist's Ogre, Malthus. Had he lived to see the Chinese
going headlong for compulsory family planning after the 15
famine in the early sixties he would perhaps have been further
mortified at his own failure to carry through that essential
domestic agenda. For, again, nobody would have known it
better than he that the Chinese had the right to go full tilt at
family planning as a quid pro quo for the basic privileges the
government had universally ensured for every Chinese, which
Nehru had neglected in India.
.
I sometimes wonder whether Nehru felt inhibited that if
he insisted on the Malthusian remedy, the communist opposition
in Parliament, for whom he seemed to have a sneaking fondness
via his attachment to the Socialist doctrine, would pounce
upon him for his neglect of the domestic agenda. Unfortunately,
the Communist Party, rather Parties, too have not covered
themselves with glory in this regard. The record of fertility
reduction in Kerala owes little to the Communist Party of
India. It is not often remembered that the decline in human
fertility was put on its course as early as 1889 by the Rajas of
Travancore and Cochin with the introduction of non-
discriminatory temple entry, universal primary education and
health care services, to which the tradition of Marumakkathayam
or matrilinearity lent so much strength. The West Bengal
Communist Party of India (Marxist)'s record in this field has
been about as dismal and irresponsible. Every facet of women's
development - primary and secondary education, health care,
infant, child and maternal mortality, equal opportunity,
attainment of professional skills, expansion of employment
outside home, has suffered in West Bengal in the last fourteen
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"Nothing is right until the politics is right. This has been to my mind
the basic impediment which has stymied the family planning
movement all along "
years. Any improvement that may have occurred in these
areas since 1977 has been in spite of the State government
16 rather than because of it. On top of it a11,both the CPI and
CPI(M) feel inhibited from invoking vigorous family planning
programmes precisely because of their deliberate neglect in
promoting women's development as a plank in their political
agenda.
The biggest impediment to the resolute political will for
any political party in India today has been doubly compounded
by the.frantic competition for acquiring assured vote banks for
the periodic legislative elections. The essence of a vote bank
is a small bank of obliged cheer-leaders at the top and a large
base of bounty-seekers below. Promises and expectations still
beguile, but to the deprived, government insistence on family
planning sounds like deception or counsel of despair. Numbers
add confidence and to election-successes and no political party
can strike at its own roots.
Nothing is right until the politics is right. This has been
to my mind the basic impediment which has stymied the
family planning movement all along, despite so much endeavour,
investment, service infrastructure, information campaign,
research competence and dedication in the last forty years.
v
To return to Dr King. He seems to have missed the real
point. Baldly put, the best way to get out of our demographic
trap is, as has happened in the western world, to assist the
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"She must be simultaneously led into a more worthwhile world,
where she will feel even more fulfilled and wanted, by
producing less of biological good and more of
social and economic good."
Indian woman to transit as swiftly as possible from being
primarily a vehicle of human reproduction, producing biological
good alone, to a vehicle of social, cultural and economic good. 1~
That cannot be achieved merely by stopping woman from
producing biological good. She must be simultaneously led
into a more worthwhile world, where she will feel even more
fulfilled arid wanted, by producing less of biological good and
more of social and economic good. It is this process in the last
one hundred and fifty years that has rescued the western
hemisphere from the kind of human entrapment through
overpopulation that King speaks of and not just the slick recipe
of declining mortality triggering the miracle of declining fertility.
A brief chronological account of this transition in King's own
country, viz. England, from a biological role to a socially
productive role as well may help to appreciate what lies before
us in India.
The state of infant mortality and fertility in the eighteenth
and nineteenth-century Europe is best illustrated by the case
of the wife of the great composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Between August 1782 when she married Mozart and June 1791
when she delivered her sixth child, Constanze gave birth to.six
children, one of whom died of 'intestinal cramps' (gastroenteritis)
and another of 'choking catarrh' (whooping cough) soon after
they were born. The fifth birth ended in death within an hour.
That this kind of fertility performance despite appreciable
infant and child mortality decline obtained until the beginning
of the twentieth century in America's New England, even
among the very rich, is conf~ed by Eleanor Itoosevelt when
she writes that in a comparable period to Constanze's, she was
'either getting into a pregnancy or out of it', although infant
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"There was a third synergising element. The cohorts of young girls in
England receiving primary education since 1870 led to
demands for still higher academic and
professionaJ education "
mortality in her case was absent. Mozart's case bears eloquent
testimony to the sad state of safe water supply, drainage and
18 sanitation in Vienna, at that time the most resplendent. city of
Europe. London was far worse off as we find from the
contemporary drawings of Hogarth. The laying on of protected'
piped domestic water supply, along with underground drainage
and sewerage, together with elementary health-care facilities,
led to a dramatic fall in infant and child mortality in the 1860's.
It was partly this first element and the fact that women's
suffrage first became law in Wyoming territory of the USA in
1869 that possibly urged John Stuart Mill to publish his classic
tract "On The Subjection Of Women" in 1869. All the same,
as is well known, the average parity per marriage in Victorian
England ruled pretty high even in the 1870's, until the full
brunt of the cost of rearing a child and, moreover, of seeing
him through school up to age ten, without expectation of any
income through child labour in the market, rose steeply and
when Parliament introduced compulsory primary education
for all children with effect from 1870. It was this burden, which
I would call the second element, more than the decline in infant
and child mortality, that resulted in a dramatic fall in the birth
rate in the decade 1870-1880, which was reflected in the British
Census of 1881, although the use of contraceptives had yet to
come.
There was a third synergising element. The cohorts of
young girls in England receiving primary education since 1870
led to demands fof still higher academic and professional
education and to the stre~heIJing of the women's suffrage
movement which started with a fresh bang in 1886 and culminated
in Parliamentary suffrage in 1928, triggering the fight for equal
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"Women constitute the last and largest reservoir of captive labour
which yields, to use Karl Marx's words, most
assured surplus value."
opportunity in all employment, offering lateral and vertical
mobility.
19
VI
Whoever has reflected over the women's question cannot
but recall Abraham Lincoln's famous words that a people
'cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free'. Despite
all the struggle for emancipation down the ages, every country
has persisted to this day in holding down half of its population,
that is, that of women, in virtual slavery, however flatteringly
disguised and denied them the freedom enjoyed by the other
half, that is man. Women constitute the last and largest reservoir
of captive labour which yields, to use Karl Marx's words, most
assured surplus value.
The law in this country has been more liberal and forward-
looking than the reality of the patchwork quilt of our rnulti-
ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious, economically unequal
society would otherwise warrant. We have equal opportunity
between the sexes guaranteed as a fundamental right in our
Constitution. The revolution that employment outside the
home has brought to women of all social classes in this country
will be evident from the reproductive behaviour of women in
the middle and upper-income groups at the ,one end and very
low paid day-labourers and domestics at the other extreme.
There has been steady improvement in height and..weight of
girls and women of these families in the last three decades. At
the upper levels, aspiration-oriented family planning limits
reproduction to not more than two, usually one. At the lowest
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"All across the board, women are in a hurry to order their destiny
and their own fertility behaviour. It will be the fault of the
bureaucracy and the social worker if this process is
not assisted to snowball into a movement."
level, a more thorough-going revolution - unfortunately despair-
20
oriented - is now almost equally inexorably under way, and
that too without fuss. A very significant proportion of such
women. between 25 and 40 in both rural and urban areas have
taken ,to tubectomy after the second or third parity whenever
the facilities are available, or even to medically-u'nassisted
abortion, defying the wrath of their spouses and seniors in the
family. There is a growing realization among this class that the
parity should not exceed two. What is more, their proportion
is steadily on the increase. They will not be browbeaten. If the
worst comes to the worst, they would rather divorce, run
away, or live single lives than lose their freedom. This silent
revolution has become the object of envy of even upper class
women who are often afraid of taking such extreme steps for
fear of losing their goodies. All across the board, women are
in a hurry to order their destin y and their own fertili ty beha viour.
It will be the fault of the bureaucracy and the social worker if
this process is not assisted to snowball into a movement. At
the same time, women must keep putting the heat on the
government to expand their professional livelihoods in the
modern technologies and employment outside of home fast
enough.
VII
Speaking of despair-oriented family planning, two
important pieces of research were published in the second half
of the fifties.One was Ajit Dasgupta and Pramod Poti's "Couple
Fertility Survey" in the city of Calcutta and the other was
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"J have the gut-feeling that this see-saw, reflecting the optimism of
the fifties and sixties, is affected by deepening pessimism
at the threshold of the twenty/irst century."
C Chandrasekharan's "Mysore Study". Both showed how
couples, whether resident or migrant, tended to betray two
distinct, consecutive and contrary trends with improvements 21
in incomes or amenities such as housing, municipal services
and sanitation, electricity and other facilities. To start with,
with improving amenities and income they went in for larger
parities than they had earlier thought desirable. But with still
further improvements in income and amenities, which had to
be paid for, and with increase in the cost of rearing children
as they grew up, along with the possibility of upward social
mobility, the desire for more children decreased. I have the
gut-feeling that this see-saw, reflecting the optimism of the
fifties and sixties, is affected by deepening pessimism at the
. threshold of the twentyfirst century.
On the other hand, I also notice a greater desire to stand
on one's own feet and take one's destiny in one's hands,
however, daunting the circumstance. While M N Srinivas
sanskritization continues to take its toll of meek submission
and bride-burning in the middle and upper income-levels, a
refreshingly new revolution is now visible at the subsistence-
wage level or still below. At such levels you, as the boy's
parent, may nurse ambitions of skinning the girl's family for
dowry, but are not likely to get away with that. If you try to
be funny after the marriage and think of putting the screws
on, the chances are that the bride, who had been working
before her marriage, will run away, seek divorce, or choose a
companion out of wedlock to keep her options open. There is
much less stigma on births out of wedlock and more of
independence in respect of defactodivorce, abortion, sterilization
and parity regulation than among the higher-income groups.
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"This is the level at which our society, to my mind, is,turning the
soil, overturning traditional values and mores, and bringing
in the winds of change more rapidly than at other
more sophistit:ated levels."
These women are aware of the value of education for their
children and anxious to put them in school at least for primary
22 education while being driven to let them work side by side to
be able to pay for their keep. This is the level at which our
society, to my mind, is turning the soil, overturning traditional
values and mores, and bringing in the winds of change' more
rapidly than at other more sophLc;ticatedlevels.
But they are now earning their freedom and independence
at enormous cost in other ways. Any Santhai home, thirty
years ago, used to be the most civilized abode to which you
could unhesitatingly take the most cultured person from
anywhere in the world. Everything would be spick and span,
clean and shining beyond measure, spare, devoid of superfluities
and the outer walls arabesqued with earth-paints, highly pleasing
to ~he eye: The women would have sculpted bodies such as
would be the envy of Khajuraho or a Bernini. The daily fare
including home-brewn liquor providing enzymes would be of
the simplest but nutritious. But alas! it is no more so. The
houses, left unattended for months, while the women migrate
for killing work elsewhere, look tumbledown and woefully
unkempt; the women overworked and emaciated with wrinkled
breasts like eighty-year olds; and the children unhealthy. This
surely is a mighty price to pay to hold on to one's freedom.
VIII
In his voyage of discovery of India, Nehru must have
realised that his own country, to recall Abraham Lincoln, was
less than one quarter free and more than three quarters slave
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""m that slavery thrives on high fertility, high infant and maternal
mortldity, illiteracy, malnutrition and lack of hygiene,
shelter and low produdivlty through lack of
knowledge and tecJmologlf:al skill".
if one includes aInong the latter not only the majority of OUf
women but the population of the scheduled castes and ~eduled
tribes as well. The fact that one quarter free, or two hundred 23
and fifty million people, which is more than the population of
a major portion of Europe, is ripe for holding its own in the
world's free-market economy, perhaps tempts our political
masters to ignore the truth that slavery thrives on high fertility,
high infant and maternal mortality, illiteracy, malnutrition
and lack of hygiene, shelter and low productivity through lack
of knowledge and technological skill.
This slavery eventually costs more, and yields less
proouctivity than free labour. Had he insisted on a tin}e-bound
target of universal primary education, resolutely reclaiming
Ambedkar, which he alone was capable of and discountenancing
the traditional discrimination against religious minorities,
backward castes and classes, Nehru would have automatically
set in motion an irreversible and accelerating trend in equality,
social justice and democratic norms. This, in turn, apart from
instilling self-respect and self-confidence, would have favoured
voluntary population control, the revolution of rising
expectations, higher productivity and demand for technological
and attitudinal change in every sphere of life. I have not ceased
to wonder how his daughter reconciled herself to social, cultural,
and economic ineqqalities, contenting herself with ameliorative
programmes of Garibi Hatao with inbuilt elements of failure.
Charity is no substitute for equity and justice. And now we are
after one tokenism after another right up to the President's.
office, leaving the grain and running after tne chaff every time.
Let us think of an area among others where Nehru could
have met with little resistance had he held fast to an indisputable
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3.5 Page 25 |
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"Nehru had also Gandhiji's model of basic education before him and
Tagore's endorsement of it."
priority. As a student of history, he must have remembered
how at the dawn of the Meiji era in 1869, the king of Japan took
24 responsibility for universal primary education alone and no
other social welfare programme. Nehru must also have known
how, with the introduction of compulsory primary education
in 1870, Great Britain assured her own ascendancy in the
industrial world and paved the way for a sharp decline in the
birth rate and employment of child labour. With his admiration
for the Soviet system, he must have also noted how Lenin was
persuaded by statistician Strumilin to reduce the outlay on
GOELRO, his favourite electrification plan for Russia and
divert funds to a crash programme of universal primary education
instead. Strumilin had, on the strength of his sample surveys,
convinced Lenin that four years of even the traditional three
R's would lead to a substantial rise in the nation's productivity.
Nehru had also Gandhiji's model of basic education before him
and Tagore's endorsement of it.
Indeed, it was this neglect on his part and later, that of his
dpughter, to firmly lay down and work out what may in one
word be called an elementary but basic domestic agenda, to
match the fulfilment of the international agenda with which
Nehru wrested the applause of the world; that still leaves India
so vulnerable and takes her away from Hie leadership that
should have belonged by rights to her. On the other hand, one
is convinced when one looks back, that it was the success,
achieved in less than a decade, arising from the resolute
pursuitof this agenda by the Peoples' Republic of China in the
fifties, and not her military might which was at that time less
than that of India, that earned the respect of the USA and
USSR.
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"The conduct of the 1951 census of West Bengal provided me with the
opportunity of measuring how disastrously the livelihood
and self-supporting status of women had deteriorated
between 1901 and 1951 all across the board
in traditional occupations."
IX
25
I was lucky that my childhood memories and later my life
as a civil servant gave me certain insights into demographic
behaviour. My boyhood recollection of an evening, listening
in to my father and his friends, soon after the first 1931 census
results had been published, left an abiding impression of the
reasons behind the continuous decline of the proportion of
females per thousand males in our population. Alarmingly,
this decline seems to have received a fresh lease of life in the
last census decade. Home truths like the inordinate preference
for male children together with deliberate as well as unintentional
neglect of unwanted female infants and children, the facts of
our phenomenally high maternal mortality, the gross
discrimination in intra-family distribution of nutrition against
females in the family right from infancy, left an indelible
impression on my mind, which I got surveyed in the sixties
and seventies.
My experience of work throughout India taught me how
the human body could be likened to a leaking bucket, from
which, what goes out by way of nutrition in just one attack of
~ intestinal infection could exceed all nourishment that a
mother or wife could have strenuously poured into it over six
months or more. The experience of the Bengal famine of 1943
added other dimensions to the problem of malnutrition. The
conduct of the 1951 census of West Bengal provided me with
the opportunity of measuring how disastrously the livelihood
and self-supporting status of women had deteriorated between
1901 and 1951 all across the board in traditional occupations.
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" every rupee invested on imparting four years of primary
schooling to girls would yield returns worth ten rupees
invested on tire advertisement of contraceptive
technologies. "
The loss over the fifty-year period would exceed a million of
26
female livelihoods while the improvement over the same period
in modern skills and occupations would amount only to a few
thousands. I brought out the full dimensions of this phenomenon
for India as a whole as well as that of our steadily deteriorating
sex ratio in my book "India's Population: Aspects of Quality
and Control".
'
A sample survey of human fertility that we had taken in
the West Bengal Census of 1951,convinced me of the effect of
even four years of traditional institutional primary education,
not tt>speak of secondary-level education or higher, in lowering
fertility and a woman's ability to take her own decisions and'
stick by them. I found confirmation of my census findings
shortly after in Ajit Dasgupta and Pramod Poti's "Couple
Fertility (in Greater Calcutta)" and C Chandrasekharan's
"Mysore Study". These gave me valuable insights into
synergistic, interacting and multiplier effects of improvements
in elementary social, cultural and economic attributes of the
household on. the fertility behaviour of women. At the
demographic session of the Indian Science Congress in 1967,
at which I was asked to deliver the keynote address on the
population problem, I ventured to postulate, with supporting
linkage-models, that every rupee invested on imparting four
years of\\p'1jmary schooling to girls would yield returns worth
ten rup~~ \\invested on the advertisement of contraceptive
technolo\\g~s\\,
The Unpr~edentedly high decadal growth in 1961 which
continued unabated in 1971 confirmed that the high trend was
in fully cry. Looking back on the third and fourth Plan
presentations around 1962-63 and 1968-69, it is difficult to
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3.8 Page 28 |
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"People seemed to be in a tearing hurry to launch what was called
the cafeteria approach, sponsored by media celebrities."
avoid the impression that while in the early sixties a certain
philosophical approach was strident, quite. another was
struggling later in the decade for recognition. Both these 27
approaches assumed that reduction of the birth-rate, irrespective
of the social, cultural and economic milieu, was a straight
function of the state of the art in contraceptive technology.
People seemed to be in a tearing hurry to launch what was
called the cafeteria approach, sponsored by media celebrities.
This was based on a series of KAP (Knowledge, Aptitude and
Practice) surveys, Most surveys seemed to be tailored to elicit
the answers of the promoters' choice. All that was needed was
to offer products attractively packaged and publidsed with
aggressive salesmanship. They were largely single-approach
campaigns. Even to this day attempts are seldom made to
relate how the nationally broadcast slogan of do bachchebas
(Two children only) holds the key to conservation and
improvement in each element of our quality of life.
Nonetheless, these media campaigns occasionally allowed
to go bizarre, for instance, the richly-appointed elephant with
its clanging bells arid gorgeous caparison displaying the inverted
red triangle wending its majestic way through villages-served
as the symbol of birth control in the public mind, dearly
dissociated from the sexual act. It opened up a new world of
readily accessible decision-making.
On the other hand, what can you say of today? Isn't it a
pity that despite so much talent and development in such
unique networks as Akashvaniand Doordarshanin the Jast forty
years, no satisfactory, graduated mass instruction modules
should have been developed for various categories of audiences
on the vital role of population in the context of social and
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"The high point came in a slim discussion paper called 'An Approach
Towards An Approach to the Fifth Five-Year Plan'. "
economic growth and preservation of the environment? Even
the government institutions of mass communication and social
28 welfare do not seem to be interested at all!
x
My background of personal experience stood me in good
stead when I went as Secretary to the Planning Commission
with C Subramaniam as Deputy Chairman and B S Minhas as
Member to work with. Both were hardnosed, down-to-earth
men who put facts before fiction or attractive theory. The high
point carne in a slim discussion paper called "An Approach
Towards An Approach to the Fifth Five-Year Plan". The list
of the basic minimum needs in the document was short and
self-evident and admitted of realistic time-frames in most
Asian countries, not to speak of India. This list is as follows:
(1) elementary and secondary education for children up to age
fourteen; (2) minimum public health facilities including triple
immunization integrate<:i with nutrition for children and
expectant and nursing mothers; (3) rural water supply; (4)
family planning infrastructure and services; (5) home sites for
landless labourers; (6) rural roads; (7) rural electrification; and
(8) slum improvement in the larger towns. The second part of
the prescription was addressed to resolute efforts at improving
infrastructure, employment, earnings, capital accumulation
and promotion of technology among self-employed categories.
Thus, as early as 1971, the prime emphasis on primary
education as the biggest lever of change and acceptance of
family planning was accepted by the Government of India, a
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" infant and child mortality was demonstrated to be indissolubly
and positively correlated with reduction in fertility."
fact which the International Planned Parenthood and family
planning organisations and the international bodies like the
UN System and World Bank, took another ten or twelve years 2~
to espouse as an act of faith and plank of primary motivation
- in family planning practices. Simultaneously, the famed Intensive
Child Development Scheme - ICDS for short was also accepted
as the prime ally of the Family Planning movement, as infant
and child mortality was demonstrated to be indissolubly and
positively correlated with reduction in fertility.
XI
Dr Radhakrishnan was fond of reciting this sloka in his
public utterances: 'Janami dharmam, no cha me pravrittih :
Janamyadharmam,no cha me nivrittih', meaning "I know what
is good, but my mind is not in it. I know what is evil, but I
cannot desist from it".
Had Nehru insisted, as only he could have, and yet carried
the nation with him, on a timebound target of removal of
discrimination against religious minorities and backward castes
and classes, he would have automatically set in motion an
irreversible and accelerating trend in equality, social justice
and democratic norms. This, along with the enforcement of the
constitutional provision of compulsory. four-year primary
education, in turn, apart from instilling self-respect and self-
confidence, would have ensured the working of our country
as a truly motivated democracy, favoured voluntary population
control, the revolution of rising expectations, higher productivity
and demand for technological and attitudinal change in every
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"No political party in India has distinguished itself for the staunch
pursuit of family planning, reductioh of infant and-maternal
mortality, primary education, sanitation and health."
sphere of life. Instead, in our soft state, four years of primary
schooling is now widely sought to be replaced by the phoney
30 literacy campaign, on which enonnous human resources and
money are being poured with little possibility of bestowing
irreversible literacy, on the plainly defeatist and shameful p\\ea
that child labour is indispensible for survival of large proportions
of households below the poverty line.
No political party in India has distinguished itself for' the
staunch pursuit of family planning, reduction of infant and
maternal mortality, primary education, sanitation and health.
On the contrary, they seem to have thwarted their pursuit in
the last forty years. Even at the last general elections our major
parties demonstrated our national talent for making the
appropriate noises on these matters in their manifestoes that
meant little more than all things to all persons. Unfortunately,
family planning suffered a severe setback during the years of
the Emergency(l975-77), on account of Sanjay Gandhi's drive
for sterilization. The government failed to appreciate that it
enjoyed no 'moral authority behind this drive, since it had
neglected the positive areas of concern that would have
compensated for the reduction of human fertility. There was
no concurrent or preparatory economic and welfare programme
for more employment and income generation, upgradation of
modem professional and technological skills, particularly among
women, and even such basic amenities as potable water supply,
fuel, shelter, nutrition and health and welfare services. There
has been even now no resolute and (:omprehensive attempt at
initiating women into the modem market of factory skills, nor
even in modem domestic or personal service skills. There is"
yet no strong effort to open up employment outside of home
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"Other countries like Indonesi~, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines,
Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have borrowed a few id,eas from India
at a time and made excellent progress in their national
programmes of family planning and child welfare."
for them in the modern blue-collar and intermedia te technologies.
Appreciation is lacking of the need to introduce women on the
same footing as men to elementary and post high-school 31
industrial training and tethnical institutions.
There has been no end of experiments yielding meaningful
knowledge for future action in every conceivable aspect of
family planning, nutrition, child development and public health.
But our government has been like the cook who insists on
breaking a dozen eggs one after another into a frying pan,
throwing each away, before proceeding to cook at all. We have
spawned no end of excellent ideas and the mechanics of
securing them in whatever areas of human development,
particularly family planning and child development, one cares
to think of, but never had the patience or will to pursue anyone
of them to its logical end. To mention but one or two instances
like the ICDS,ORT, the Tamil Nadu Nutrition Project, or, say,
the community forest programme in villages for firewood. The
Population Education Programme Service of the UNESCO
Principal Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific at Bangkok
has produced most excellent modules and Instruction Manuals
for Population Education and Family Planning, much of the
material for which has been drawn from field experiments
conducted in various parts of India. A similar situation obtains
in the area of child development witp the UNICEF (India can
claim credit for oral rehydration and ICDS) and still another
with conventional and non-conventional contraceptives and
reversible as well as irreversible sterilization with WHO. Other
countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines,
Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have borrowed a few ideas from
India at a time and made excellent progress in their national
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4.3 Page 33 |
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"We have a way of going back every time to square one, with an itch
for pulling out the potato plant every morning to check
how much it grew the night before."
programmes of family planning and child welfare. But right
iri May 1992, we find the National Development Council still
32 mulling over what may be called rudimentary problems of
programme organisation, mobilization and education, which
one should have thought had been quite satisfactorily worked
out in these crucial areas as early as the early seventies. The
background paper prepared in December 1991 on "Population
Control: Perspective and Planning" for the 43rd meeting of
the National Development Council was little more than a
bland, toothless undergraduate exercise. We have a way of
going back every time to square one, with an itch for pulling
out the potato plant every morning to ch~ck how much it grew
the night before.
XII
I have given half of my life in the service of the government.
I am, therefore not without credentials, however modest. I
trust you will believe me that it has given me no pleasure at
all, but great pain to say all that I have. The only relief has been
that I have said all this in the presence of people some of whom
enjoy even greater credentials than mine and for whose
commitment and knowledge I have had respect for more than
thirty years. My point is that the vital parameters of success
in this field and that of environment were firmly laid down as
early as quite twenty years ago by the Planning Commission
and accepted by the Government. As for the environment, you
will remember that Mrs Indira Gandhi made her great speech
at the world forum in Stockholm around that time.
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"Yet the National Development Council has been dithering all along
with population and conservation, as though theywere
just another job or conservation piece."
Great men and women carne fOlward to move mountains.
For instance, take population control and contraception. Where
else on earth would you find the equals of J R D Tata, 33
Avabai Wadia, Banoo Coyaji, D Banerjee, G P Talwar, Vibha
Puri, S P Godrej or Somnath Roy? In nutrition, child and
maternal mortality and the interrelationships of malnutrition,
public health, irnmunisation and reduction of population size,
where else will you find the equals of the National Institute
of Nutrition or people like Dr C Gopalan, with his Nutrition
Foundation and his achievements in the world of nutrition
research, who has just published a marvellous account of the
situation in South East Asian countries or people like Dr Shanti
Ghosh, the assiduous Dr B N Tandon, or our friends in UNICEF,
UNDP, Ford Foundation, the IBRD?In the matter of the media
and working out educational modules, where will you get the
equals of National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child
Development or Indian Institute of Mass Communication and
all those with experience of our first satellite education project?
Where else will you find persons like Ela Bhatt, Mrs Dandavate,
Chitra Naik, Lotika Sarkar or Upendra Buxi who know all
about women's employment in this era of technological change
and all about women's rights? As for the all-embracing area
of education and administrative ability to harness their many-
splendoured synergising effects, where else will you find the
equals of such great administrators and coordinators as
G D Khosla, Tarlok Singh, J S Bajajor B B Vohra?
Yet the National Development Council has been dithering
all along with population and conservation, as though they
were just another job or conversation piece. The people of India
have received little signal of urgency even in 1992 of this area
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" 'Great things are done,' as William Blake had said long ago, 'when
men and mountains meet'. "
being the most central for the survival of India as the still living
34
cradle as well as promoter of civilization. All such stalwarts
and their associates as I have named, are made to wait in the
corridors while the National Development Council goes on,
year after year, through the same motions, neglecting the three
most crucial things for the survival ofIndia which, to my mind,
are:
(1) A timebound programme targeted at each stage for
graduated reduction of population growth and the
conservation of critical areas of our eco-subsystem.
(2) A relook and, if necessary, a vital amendment of our
Constitution to ensure equal accountability and equal
responsibility on these matters, even in those fields where
the Constitution $0 far has entrusted primary responsibility
to States which suffer from lack ofdirection and commitment
for reasons I have mentioned.
(3) The need of harnessing our great experts in different fields /
in meaningful and responsible task forces to advise, monitor
and make midcourse corrections to timebound programmes
to ensure the convergence and multiplier effects of the
various concurrent programmes. The National Development
Council stands for the mountain of direction and leadership,
and the Task Forces for the men who must be called in
instead of being made to stand and wait in the corridors.
"Great things are done," as William Blake had said long
ago, "when men and mountains meet".
I thank you for your patience and courtesy.
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ABOUT THE SPEAKEij.
Born in 1917, Dr Asok Mitra was educated at Presidency
College, Calcutta and at Merton College, Oxford. He entered the
Indian Civil Service in 1939and retired in 1975.
3!
As a member of the ICS in Bengal, he came in touch with
stalwarts like Dr B C Roy and Prof P C Mahalanobis. The historic
Bengal Famine left a profound impact on his mind, documented
in "Towards Independence: 1940-47"which forms volume two of
his autobiography: "Memoirs of an Indian Civil Servant".
Dr. Mitra held prominent posts in the Government of India
including Registrar General and Census Commissioner; Secretary,
Ministry of Information and Broadcasting; Secretary, Ministry of
Civil Aviation and Tourism; Secretary, Planning Commission;
and finally, Secretary to the President of India. His tenure as
Information Secretary is fondly remembered for providing
enlightened leadership to the Indian documentary movement,
and promotion of contemporary cinema. Similarly, his tenure as
Registrar General saw the transformation of the Indian census
into an authoritative body of data, suited to the needs of a
developing society.
Dr Asok Mitra has played a crucial part in promoting
population studies in India.Afterretirement,he joined theJawaharJaI
Nehru University as Professor of Population Studies at the School
of Social Sciences where he established the faculty of Population
Studies.
In the international sphere also, Dr Asok Mitra held important
positions in various United Nations bodies and professional
institutions. These include: Member, IUSSPsince 1958;Member,
UN Population Commissionfrom 1963to 1968;Member, organising
committee for the First and Second Asian Population Conference,
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4.7 Page 37 |
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"Dr Asok Mitra has also been associated with the Family Planning
- Foundation. His stu«y 'India's Population: Aspects of Quality
and Control 1978' sponsored by the Foundation has
proved to be a work of seminal importance."
1963and 1972;Member, Protein Calorie Advisory Group of the
36
UN System 1973-77;Member, UN Preparatory Committee for the
Third Population Conference, Bucharest 1974; and Honorary
Member of the Geographical Society of the USSR.Dr Asok Mitra
has also been associated with population activities of ECAFE
OaterESCAP),UN Population Division, UNFPA,FAOand WHO
since 1958.
A prolificwriter in Bengaliand English,Dr Mitrais responsible
for an original body of work on the History of Art and cultural
appreciation as well as on study of issues relating to population
and women's status, etc. His important publications include:
1951 Census Reports, Gazetteers and Special Studies of West
Bengal(1950-58)1; 961All India Census Reports;Levelsof Regional
Development, Housing and Establishment Reports of India (1960-
68); Calcutta: India's City; Delhi: Capital City; Population in
India's Development, 1947-2000;India's Population: Aspects of
Qualityand Control- Two Volumes;Status of Women: Implications
ofDeclining SexRatio in India's Population; Three Score'and Ten:
The First Score and Three; Towards Independence 1940-47;The
New India 1948-1955.
In recognitionofhis pre-eminencein the world of demography,
Dr Asok Mitra was honoured by the Academy of Sciences, USSR
with an award of the degree of the Doctor of Science (Honoris
Causa).
Dr Asok Mitra has also been associated with the Family
Planning Foundation. His study "India's Population: Aspects of
Quality and Control - 1978"sponsored by the Foundation has
proved to be a work of seminal importance.
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4.8 Page 38 |
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