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India Faces Its Population Problems

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Curbing Population Growth

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Abstract

Throughout much of this century India has captured the public imagination as the quintessentially overpopulated country. The Population Bomb, Paul R. Ehrlich’s overheated tract of the 1960s, sets the tone in the first chapter:

I have understood the population explosion intellectually for a long time. I came to understand it emotionally one stinking hot night in Delhi a couple of years ago.... The streets seemed alive with people. People eating, people washing, people sleeping. People visiting, arguing and screaming. People thrusting their hands through the taxi window, begging. People defecating and urinating. People clinging to buses. People herding animals. People, people, people, people...1

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Notes

  1. Paul R. Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (New York: Ballantine Books, 1968), p. 15. Ehrlich notes that he borrowed the title from a pamphlet first published by the Hugh Moore Fund in 1954.

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  3. John Caldwell and Pat Caldwell, Limiting Population Growth and the Ford Foundation Contribution (London: Frances Pinter, 1986), p. 4.

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  4. Ibid., pp. 40-41.

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  5. Francis X. Sutton, Ford Foundation History Project Report (Overseas Development), Part II (draft ms.), August 1984, p. 67, Ford Foundation Archives.

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  6. “The beads used were those sold in Jan Path, New Delhi, by Nepalese vendors, reported to be favourites (considered dainty) by European and American women” (B. L. Raina, “A Quest for a Small Family,” unpublished ms., 1988, pp. 64-65).

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  7. Douglas Ensminger, “The Ford Foundation’s Relations with the Planning Commission,” Oral History, October 21, 1971, p. 11.

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  8. Ibid., p. 13.

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  9. Douglas Ensminger, “A Self-Examination of the Ford Foundation’s Involvement in Family Planning in India,” memorandum to himself, August 18, 1967, p. 1.

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  10. Interview with Moye Freymann, May 4, 1990.

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  11. Nicholas J. Demerath, Birth Control and Foreign Policy (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), p. 64).

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  12. The initial grant of $330,000 was supplemented by $603,000 in 1961, but little of the supplementary grant was used for the FPCAR program and all but $55,414 was transferred to other population projects in 1966 (Kathleen D. McCarthy, “The Ford Foundation’s Population Programs in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, 1959–1981,” endnote 13, p. 97, 1985, Ford Foundation Archive Report #011011).

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  13. Raina, “A Quest for a Small Family,” p. 24.

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  14. Interview with Moye Freymann, May 4, 1990.

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  15. A “block” in India has about 100,000 inhabitants. Gandhigram is located within Athoor block.

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  16. McCarthy, “The Ford Foundation’s Population Programs,” p. 8.

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  17. Ibid., p. 74.

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  19. Demerath, Birth Control and Foreign Policy, pp. 66-67.

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  20. Interview with Moye Freymann, April 4, 1990.

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  21. Ibid.

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  22. Ronald Freedman, “The Contribution of Social Science Research to Population Policy and Family Planning Program Effectiveness,” Studies in Family Planning 18, no. 2 (March/April 1987):63.

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  23. Frank Wilder and T. K. Tyagi, “India’s New Departures in Mass Motivation for Fertility Control,” Demography 5, no. 2 (1968):773-779.

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  26. Interview with Moye Freymann, May 4, 1990.

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  27. Officially, this was a report of a committee headed by K. T. Chandy, director of the Calcutta Institute of Management, to which King served as a consultant. The report is summarized in Studies in Family Planning 1, no. 6 (March 1965):7-12.

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  28. “Introduction to the Reproductive Biology Grants, Their General Background and Objectives,” The Ford Foundation in India and Nepal, Status Report, October 1, 1966, p. 49, Ford Foundation Archives.

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  29. Ibid.

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  30. Interview with Sheldon Segal, March 17, 1988.

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  31. Letter to Roy Hill, December 9, 1967.

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  33. McCarthy, “The Ford Foundation’s Population Programs,” p. 21.

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  34. Minkler, “Consultants or Colleagues,” p. 409.

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  35. Ensminger, “A Self-Examination,” p. 4.

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  36. Ibid., pp. 5-9.

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  37. Minkler, “Consultants or Colleagues,” p. 403.

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  38. John P. Lewis, “Population Control in India,” in Harrison Brown and Edward Hutchings, Jr., eds., Are Our Descendants Doomed? (New York: Viking Press, 1972), pp. 243-244.

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  39. Ibid., p. 222.

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  41. Phyllis Piotrow, World Population Crisis: The United States Response (New York: Praeger, 1973), p. 179.

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  42. Meredith Minkler, “Role Conflict and Role Shock: American and Indian Perspectives on the Role of U.S. Family Planning Advisors in India,” unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California (Berkeley). 1975, p. 245.

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  43. Ibid., p. 228.

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  44. David E. Bell and Frank Sutton, “Population in Relation to the Foundation’s Purposes and Programs,” Ford Foundation internal memorandum, April 1968, Ford Foundation Archives.

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  45. Ozzie G. Simmons, “Survey of Social Sciences Relevant to Population Problems: India,” Ford Foundation internal memorandum, April 2, 1971, pp. 3-4, Ford Foundation Archives.

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  46. McCarthy, “The Ford Foundation’s Population Programs,” p. 53.

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  47. W. Henry Mosley and Lincoln C. Chen, “An Analytic Framework for the Study of Child Survival in Developing Countries,” in Child Survival: Strategies for Research (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 25–48.

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  51. McCarthy, “The Ford Foundation’s Population Programs,” p. 15.

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  52. Ronald Freedman, personal communication, August 1994.

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  53. S. Krishnakumar, The Story of the Ernakulum Experiment in Family Planning (Government of Kerala, 1971).

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  54. Ibid., p. 149.

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  55. Freedman, “The Contribution of Social Science Research,” p. 61.

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  56. Davidson R. Gwatkin, “Political Will and Family Planning: The Implications of India’s Emergency Experience,” Population and Development Review 5, no. 1 (March 1979):32.

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  57. Ibid., pp. 44-45.

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  58. John Kantner, Population in India’s Development (New Delhi: USAID, 1986), pp. 70–71.

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  59. Calculation from contraceptive prevalence data compiled by W. Parker Mauldin, 1990.

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  61. According to an empirical formula, crude birthrate = 48.4 − 0.44 (contraceptive prevalence), See Jain, “Issues in Population Programs in India,” p. 6.

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  1. The Ford Foundation, New York, New York, USA

    Oscar Harkavy

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Harkavy, O. (1995). India Faces Its Population Problems. In: Curbing Population Growth. The Springer Series on Demographic Methods and Population Analysis. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-9906-4_6

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