PRESSURE OF POPULATION

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28080, 22 September 1956, Page 3

PRESSURE OF POPULATION

INDIA’S PROBLEM EXAMINED Population and Planned Parenthood in India. By C. Chandrasekhar. Allen and Unwin. 108 pp. India’s population problem and ways of dealing with it constitute the cheme of this book. The problem as the author sees it arises out of “an extremely high fertility accompanied by a relatively high but declining mortality,” with a resulting increase in population amounting to nearly five million a year. This increase—he states—need not constitute a problem if the Indian standard of living were high enough to absorb without detriment to itself the additional population. But the situation is far otherwise. as this /book nakes abundantly clear. It is a situation of dire and widespread poverty which the author describes in all its grimness. With regard to one aspect of it he writes: “According to official statistics about 200.000 mothers die annually from causes connected with child-birth. This appalling maternal mortality is matched only by. an equally shocking infant mortality. A hundred out of every thousand young wives are doomed to death in giving birth to children. And about 150 infants out of every 1000 live births die before they reach their birthday.” Having stated the problem, then, in detailed and scientific fashion, the author examines possible ways of finding a solution to it. Neither in development of agriculture nor in industrialisation can he see a solution to it. And as for emigration or internal migration, neither —he points out —can offer any substantial relief from population pressure. He therefore explores the possibilities of birth control as a means of solving the problem. And it is birth control planned on a national scale that he has in mind. He points out that the Government of India and its Planning Commission have declared themselves in favour of planned parenthood and, furthermore, that from surveys of attitudes to family planning made in various districts a large percentage of those interviewed have declared themselves in favour of family Planning. Why, then, he asks, are there no birth control clinics spread all over India’s villages, towns and cities? Only 70 such clinics of the modern, western type—he states —are located in various cities of India. In summing up his case for a wide adoption of the measures he advocates, he points to the fact that “India—rural as well as urban—has become aware that large families and population growth constitute a problem and jeopardise the realisation of a better level of living in terms of health and wealth.” This awareness, he believes, has induced a perceptible change in individual and group attitudes in favour of planned parenthood. Birth control as a moral and religious issue he discusses briefly And he sees little to support the arguments commonly advanced against it on these grounds. At the same time he welcomes a tolerant and realistic approach to the subject on the part of religious bodies - The book contains a select oibliography and has an introduction by Dr. Julian Huxley. Statistical appendices to the book include population and vital statistics from the 1951 census of India.

Altogether this is a well considered, and well presented piece of writing animated throughout by a very real sense of the urgency of the problem with which it deals.