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2016 Johnston Cathryn 10427 This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Demography and the Population Problem in India Data, Research and Policy, 1938-1974 Johnston, Cathryn Anne Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 28. Sep. 2021 Demography and the Population Problem in India: Data, Research and Policy, 1938-1974 Cathryn Johnston A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy King’s College London Department of History DECLARATION This thesis represents my own work. Where the work of others is mentioned, it is duly referenced and acknowledged as such. Cathryn Johnston London, 30th October, 2015 3 COPYRIGHT DECLARATION The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives licence. Researchers are free to copy, distribute or transmit the thesis on the condition that they attribute it, that they do not use it for commercial purposes and that they do not alter, transform or build upon it. For any reuse or redistribution, researchers must make clear to others the licence terms of this work. 4 ABSTRACT This thesis is about the relationship between research, data and the population problem in India between 1938 and 1974. It argues that the research practices and the data collected by demographers and social scientists in India are crucial to understanding how the population problem was framed, understood, and acted on. New kinds of research such as sample surveys, and knowledge attitude and practice (KAP) surveys were instrumental in constructing India as an overpopulated country in the twentieth century, as well as in furnishing India with the means to use and challenge this label by the 1970s. Many of the arguments made about the history of population control in India have focused on the role of the international network of population control experts in shaping the policies implemented by the Indian Government. This historiography has stressed the importance of contraception and of American expertise. This thesis re-frames this narrative by focusing on social science research and researchers as they worked in and on India. It examines the importance of behavioural approaches to family planning and population control, and their role in shaping how the population problem was understood and acted on. It revisits the importance of arguments about development, modernization, and fertility, focusing on the importance of different developmental models and their impact on population policy in the post-colonial period. It charts the connections between research and policy, exploring how they raised new questions about the empirical reality of the population problem, about the proper way to measure and understand it, and ultimately, explores the relationship between the state, statistics and individuals. 5 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS DTRC Demographic Training and Research Committee ECAFE UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East FPAI Family Planning Association of India FPRPC Family Planning Research and Programmes Committee IIPS Indian Institute for Population Studies ISI Indian Statistical Institute IUCD Intrauterine Contraceptive Device KAP Knowledge, Attitude, Practice NPC National Planning Committee NSS National Sample Survey RPC Research and Programmes Committee UN United Nations USAID United States Agency for International Development UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization WHO World Health Organization 6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks goes first and foremost to my supervisors, Dr. Jahnavi Phalkey and Dr. Jon Wilson for their patience, their support and their guidance. Professor David Edgerton was also unfailingly generous with his time, and with valuable criticisms, for which I am very grateful. The help of friends and colleagues was invaluable – my thanks to Michael, Kapil, Ale, Gabi, Amy, Maggie and Aaro, who helped combine intellectual pursuits with a sense of fun. I owe particular thanks to Shankar and Avinash for putting me up in India, as well as for being endlessly patient with sightseeing, translating, and the excitements (and difficulties) of research and travel in general. Barbara Floyd at the University of Toledo went above and beyond the call of duty – my thanks to her and to Mr. Floyd for their help, but also for their kindness. The staff at the University of Toledo, the Rockefeller Archive Center in New York, at the British Library, and the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library have been incredibly generous with their time and expertise; I thank them all. Finally, I would like to thank the people who have had to put up with the most: Mom, Dad and Ben. Without your support and your help I couldn’t have done it. 7 Table of Contents Declaration .............................................................................................................................................. 3 Abstract ..................................................................................................................................................... 5 List of Abbreviations ............................................................................................................................ 6 Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................................. 7 Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 11 Chapter One: The Census, Data and the Population Problem, 1931- 1941 .................................................................................................................................................. 35 Chapter Two: Planning and the Population Problem in Independent India .................................................................................................................................................. 59 Chapter Three: Institutionalizing Demographic Research .................................................. 91 Chapter Four: Research, Action and Extension Education in the Third Five Year Plan .............................................................................................................................. 123 Chapter Five: From Mass Communication to Mass Camps ................................................. 149 Chapter Six: Challenging the Population Problem in the early 1970s ........................... 183 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................... 213 Bibliography ...................................................................................................................................... 219 9 INTRODUCTION In 1951, the young demographer Sripati Chandrasekhar gave the Presidential Speech at the First All-India Family Planning Conference. Arguing with a ‘torrential eloquence’, he sought to convince those assembled of the scale of India’s population problem and to plead for family planning. ‘Uncontrolled human fertility’ was, he claimed, ‘one of the gravest problems of our time’.1 It was problem of many dimensions, and Chandrasekhar drew on a well-established body of population thought in India to argue about it, ranging from population distribution to growth, from food and natural resources to international peace. India’s population density, its rate of growth and declining mortality, and their impact on the vision many held for a prosperous, developed nation constituted the population problem.2 The situation was dire, he argued, but there was a solution. Agriculture could be modernized to increase yields, industrialization would increase labour productivity and produce new, urban patterns of social life, but most importantly birth control would give people the means to bring parenthood ‘under voluntary control’.3 Having babies ‘by choice and not by chance’ was linked not only to individual reproductive decision-making, but also to economic planning and the future prosperity of the nation. For Chandrasekhar, the population problem, and its solutions, were part of a broader process of national progress - progress towards ‘civilized values’, the ‘conservation of life’ and a democratic society.4 His speech
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