President Speaks Of India’s Problems

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31586, 25 January 1968, Page 12

President Speaks Of India’s Problems

The race between population and food supplies in India was the subject of the first paper delivered to the A.N.Z.A.A.S. congress last evening—the presidential address by Professor Sir John Crawford, director and professor of economics of the School of Pacific Studies at the Australian National University, Canberra.

In a 30-page paper entitled “The Malthusian Spectre in India”, Professor Crawford said that the population of India, which was about 500 million in 1966, was likely to grow to 864 million by 1985 if control did not “bite” in the mid-19705. Sir John Crawford was a member of the World Bank Economic Mission to India in 1964-65.

The “Malthusian spectre”— the notion that population must tend to outrun the means of subsistence—was still a relevant consideration to today’s great masses of poor people in Asia, Sir John Crawford said. THE “GIANTS”

China and India were the “giants” in Asia, which in 1966 had about 54 per cent of | the world’s population. “But if ever Malthus has seemed relevant in any country, it has been India since: 1960,” the professor said. ’

There was little new land there; the scope for emigration was virtually nil; opportunities for obtaining sufficient food by trade were limited: and the pressure of population on land resources was all too evident.

In a more cheerful note, Sir John Crawford said the growth rate of agricultural production in India could be raised sufficiently to take care of both the population increase and the rising stan [dards of food consumption. ONLY SOLUTION “Population control is indeed on the way in India, but it cannot give much dividend inside the next decade,” Sit John Crawford said. “Trade and aid have the significance, but are not the answer to the situation.”

The growth of agricultural production was the only solution. The Government in New Delhi could not run the risks of a policy which placed all the onus for the solution of its “Malthusian” dilemma directly on trade and aid. It must raise agricultural productivity at home.

Sir John Crawford ended by suggesting “a healthy development” of the A.N.Z.A.A.S. if its members joined forces with fellow-scientists in the Pacific and Asia, in a comprehensive review of the [great problems of social and .economic advancement faced by “our neighbours”.