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re/productions: Issue#1
__________
An Imagined Reality:
Malthusianinsm, Neo-Malthusianism and Population Myth
Mohan Rao
___________________
Malthusianism and neo-Malthusianism offer an excessively simplistic
understanding of the complex relationship of resources and population,
which has
proven to be a theoretical red herring.
This article attempts to critically examine the Malthusian writings
locating the
philosophy in a socio-political context and draws attention to its
conceptual,
methodological and empirical weaknesses.
___________________________________
India was one of the first nations in the world to initiate an
official family
planning programme. Commencing in the First Five-Year Plan in 1952
with a clinic
approach, the programme took wing in the Third Five-Year Plan with the
adoption
of the Extension Education approach in 1962. In 1965, the United
Nations
Advisory Mission suggested the launching of what was called the
'Reinforced
Programme', the major component of which was an "energetic loop (IUCD)

programme". As a consequence, the programme was over hauled with an
emphasis on
the intrauterine device to meet the family planning programme goals.
Towards the
end of the 60s it was increasingly being realised that the IUCD
strategy had not
been successful. The programme strategy in the Fourth Plan period, in
the early
1970s, relied therefore largely on vasectomy in what was called the
'camp
approach'. The camp approach, however, proved difficult to sustain and
in view
of the abuses in the family planning programme in the period of the
emergency,
vasectomy was virtually abandoned. Attention now focused on female
sterilisations- which formed the cornerstone of the programme during
the Sixth
and Seventh Plan periods.
Towards the end of the Seventh Five Year Plan, it was increasingly,
albeit
grudgingly, being accepted that the programme had failed. The mid-term
appraisal
of the Seventh Plan noted that the birth rate had not fallen despite
couple
protection rates having gone up considerably. The Public Accounts
committee in
its 139th Report observed that despite massive financial inputs into
the
programme, the birth rate had remained stationary. Indeed the late
prime
minister Rajiv Gandhi in his inaugural address to the XXI
International
Population Congress in September 1989 observed that there was
"inadequate causal
connection between our family planning programme and the impact of
these on our
birth rates" and that "the rate of increase in financial outlays in
family
planning is not matched by a commensurate decline in birth rates".
Briefly, what has occurred is that a programme strategy is adopted
with
enthusiasm; it appears to work before soon running aground. A new
strategy is
then adopted, frequently centering on some new technology, often
inspired by
international agencies. But each new twist in the programme strategy
appears to
lead up a blind alley. Indeed it would not be exaggeration to state
that the
history of family planning in India is a history of monumental
failures. As PC
Joshi succinctly stated, "Family planning has failed, but family
planning must
succeed runs the refrain of policy-makers". [Joshi 1974]
This paper addresses itself to why the programme has quite simply
failed to take
off. Is the problem one of strategy ? Is it the question of technical
choices
alone ? Is it - as is so frequently adduced- due to the superstitious
disregard
of people who need education about the virtues of a small family ? But
then even
this approach failed to yield commensurate results. While these are no
doubt
important and relevant issues, the questions addressed here are
substantially
different. Could it be that there is some fundamental problem in the
approach,
in the manner in which the problem is posited ? Has the
conceptualisation of the
question ignored critical and central issues ? Is this due to the
over-arching
influence of the ideas of Malthus on the perception of the issue?
The paper is divided into two sections; the first examining the
writings of
Malthus, attempts to situate them in a socio-political context and
includes a
critique of Malthusian methodology. The second traces the different
threads that
form the weft and warp of neo-Malthusianism and draws attention to its

conceptual, methodological and empirical weaknesses.

I

So overwhelming is the influence of Reverend Thomas Malthus that no
examination
of the question of population can avoid commencing with his writing. 1
But
before considering his writings and placing them in the social contest
of his
times, it might perhaps be salutary to briefly survey the views of
some 18th
century moral philosophers of Europe on the subject of population.
Montesquieu was one of the most influential writers on the population
question.
His work Letters Persanes, published in 1721, made a profound impact
on
Enlightenment thinkers both in Scotland and on the Continent. Written
in the
form of an imaginary correspondence, the book examines a number of
social issues
of the day. In his view, the French nation was degenerate and the
population,
therefore, declining. In a large number of letters he examines the
reasons for
the decline of population. He attributed the decline to the influence
of the
Catholic Church on the one hand; and the oppressive economic policies-
in
particular agricultural taxation of the aristocracy - on the other. He
called
for thoroughgoing economic reforms to halt the decline of population.
Comparing
contemporary France to a supposedly populous Ancient Greece, he argued
that a
government must be concerned with increasing the population through
the
provision of employment. This coupled with political liberty, lead in
his view
to the wealth of a nation. [Tomaselli 1988].
Hume did not echo Montesquieu's views on the populousness of ancient
civilisations. Nonetheless he noted that compared to the commonwealth
of the
ancient world "where of course a great equality of fortune prevailed",
the
"situation of affairs in modern times with regard to civil liberty as
well as
equality of fortune, is not near so favorable either to the
propagation or
happiness of mankind". The populousness of a nation was related to and
depended
upon happiness, equality, liberty and industriousness. In his words:
"every wise, just and mild government by rendering the condition of
its subjects
easy and secure, will always abound most in people as well as in
commodities and
richer... If every this else be equal, it seems natural to expect,
that,
wherever there are most happiness and virtue, and the wisest
institutions, there
will also be most people [Tomaselli 1988].
The ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau on the question of population were
also
distinctly pro-nationalist, In Du Control Social, published in 1762,
he wrote:
What is the end of political association ? The preservation and
prosperity of
its members. And what is the surest mark of their preservation and
prosperity ?
Their number and population ... The rest being equal, the government
under
which, without external aids, without naturalisation or colonies, the
citizens
increase, and multiply most is beyond question the best [Rousseau
1762]
The most influential of Enlightenment texts, the Encyclopedia of 1765
edited by
Diderot, drew largely on the work of Montesquieu and Hume. Its entry
on
population noted that ceteris paribus the countries where felicity
flourished
were those which were also endowed with large populations. These were
also the
countries where the government was least complex and where there
existed
relative equality, and liberty. [Tomaselli 1988].
The importance of employment to population was further developed in
Sir James
Steuart's An Enquiry into the Principles of Political Economy, a
rather
sophisticated discourse on the population question published in 1767.
Modern
society, he said, was complex and it was on the basis of the complex
division of
labour, and the consequent exchange of goods and services, that the
wealth of a
nation was built. Full employment and industriousness were both
essential.
Steuart's observations are also precursors of ideas Malthus later
developed; the
Malthusian seed was, in a manner of speaking, sown in his theories. To
quote one
crucial passage, if at length:
Every individual is equally inspired with a desire to propagate. A
people can no
more remain without growing propagating, than tree without growing.2
But no more
can live than can be fed; and as all augmentations of food must come
to a stop
so soon as this happens, a people increase no more; that is to say,
the
proportion of those who die annually increases. This insensibly deters
from
propagation, because we are rational creatures. But still there are
some who,
though rational, are not prudent; these marry and produce. This I call
vicious
propagation. Hence I distinguish propagation into two branches, to
wit,
multiplication, which goes on among those who feed what they breed,
and mere
procreation, which takes place among those who cannot maintain their
offspring.
This last produces a political disease, which mortality cures at the
expense of
much misery.... How to propose a remedy for this inconveniency without
laying
some restraint upon marriage; how to lay a restraint upon marriage
without
shocking the spirit of the times, I own I cannot find out. [Tomaselli
1988].
What is striking about the commentaries of all these thinkers is their

appreciation of the enormous complexities of the problem and the
phenomenal
number of issues which are seen in relation to population. These
encompass a
wide range of socio-economic issues including wages, employment, the
condition
of work, security in old age, parental perception of children, the
status of
women and so on. The second feature these thinkers share is that
population is
regarded as the dependent variable, responding to changes in a wide
spectrum of
interlinked socio-economic determinants. Population, then, is the
effect of
changes in a complex web of inter-acting socio-economic factors.
Strikingly
unanimous is also the perception of the desirability of large
populations which
are associated with plenitude, equality and liberty; in other words,
the very
structure of society.
By the late 18th century, however, the perception of the population
question had
altered fundamentally. The reasons for this shift in perception are
enormously
complex and are to be sought in the socio-economic milieu of those
turbulent
times. We shall explore some of them shortly after examining the
writings of
Malthus.
Predecessors of Malthus
Among the numerous predecessors of Malthus, two deserve mention.
Robert Wallace
in Numbers of Mankind, published in 1753, calculated the number of
progeny of
one couple under different sets of conditions. And Benjamin Franklin
in a
pamphlet in 1755, entitled Observations Concerning the Increase,
argued that the
population of America tended to increase geometrically, doubling every
25 years
[Gordon 1991]. Indeed Malthus, in the first edition of his work,
acknowledged
the fact that numerous other writers had already put forward the
population
growth argument. But it was Malthus who stole the limelight; it was
his name
that became common household knowledge; his ideas that were
eponymously named.
The historic work, An Essay on the Principle of Population was first
published
anonymously to resounding success in 1798.
Malthus sets forward two basic propositions. "First, that food is
necessary to
the existence of man. Secondly, that the passion between the sexes is
necessary
and will remain nearly in its present state". Then after a reference
to Godwin's
'unphilosophical' (i.e. unscientific) speculations on the moderation
of sexual
passion, he writes one of the most famous, or notorious, passages in
social
science :
Assuming that my postulates as granted, I say, that the power of
population is
indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce
subsistence for man.
Population, when unchecked, increase in a geometric ratio. Subsistence
increases
only in an arithmetic ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will
show the
immensity of the first power in comparison of the second. [Malthus
1970].
It followed therefore that populations would increase as long as there
was
availability of food. When numbers grow beyond that point, the growth
of
population is halted by two means : one he called the positive check,
i.e,
hunger famine and pestilence; and the other a preventive check, i.e,
"a
foresight of the difficulties attending the rearing of a family acts
as a
preventive check"3. The former inevitably, and naturally' , fall on
the lower
classes of society. To attempt to raise the standard of living of the
lower
classes by increasing wages would, through the operation of the laws
of nature,
be rendered ineffectual. Their population would then only increase
further, till
checked by subsistence. Thus emerges an iron law of wages : the
subsistence wage
as the just wage, because if wages are higher, population growth
occurs till
checked by poverty.
Poverty, then was a natural condition of human existence and was not a
product
of human institutions. The role of the poor was to accept misery for
"the misery
that checks population falls chiefly, as it always must do, upon that
part whose
condition is lowest in the scale of society". The rich are in no way
responsible
for poverty; they are enjoined not to exert themselves to do something
about it
for "no possible contributions or sacrifices of the rich, particularly
in money,
could for any time prevent the recurrence of distress among the lower
members of
society."
Malthus was opposed to relief for the poor under what was known as the

Speenhamland system. In his view, relief would only mean a
deterioration of the
general condition of not only everyone else but also that of the poor
themselves:
The poor laws of England tend to depress the general condition of the
poor in
these two ways. The first obvious tendency is to increase population
without
increasing the food for its support .. Secondly the quantity of
provisions
consumed in work houses upon a part of the society that cannot in
general be
considered as the most valuable part diminishes the shares that would
otherwise
belong to the more industrious and more worthy members and thus in the
same
manner forces more to become dependent.4
Malthus was thus a trenchant partisan to one of the most bitter
debates of the
day relating to the reform of the Poor Laws. Indeed his views heavily
influenced
the passage of the Reform Bill in 1834 [cole 1946].
What was the Poor Law reform ? How did the need for change in the Poor
Laws
arise : Customarily, in the days of yore in England, the maintenance
of the poor
and disabled was the responsibility of the local community, the
parish. The
paristi church obtained a tithe- one tenth of an income-from every
member of the
community, a par of which was made over to the needy in the parish.
However, the
commercialisation of agriculture and the consequent take-over by
landlords of
common pasturage, viz, the Enclosure Movement between the 16th and
18th
centuries not only sundered feudal relations but also. through
pauperisation of
a section of the peasantry [Hobsbawm 1977] vastly increased the
magnitude of
poverty even as it enriched the landlords. The poor were earlier tied
by feudal
bonds to their parishes; now not only were these bonds not existent,
they were
backbend by the prospect of jobs, however unfamiliar, in the
newly-opened
industries in the towns. Painful as the prospect of leaving an
ancestral hearth
was, more and more poor were left with little option.
In the words of Hobsbawn,
But ... an industrial economy needs labour, and where else but from
the former
non-industrial sector was it to come from ? The rural population at
home were
the most obvious sources supplemented by the miscellaneous petty
producers and
labouring poor. Men must be attracted into the new occupations, or if-
as was
most probable- they were unwilling to abandon their traditional way of
life-
they must be forced into it. Economic and social hardship was the most
effective
whip; the higher money wages and greater freedom of the town the
supplementary
carrot.
Roving bands of paupers seeking employment, migrating, were thus a
common sight
in the English countryside over these years. Rootless and jobless,
they were
ever-present sources of political trouble, of potential and
threatening
lawlessness. What then was to be done about them ?
Malthus was very forthright in his views: "The truth is that the
pressure of
distress on this part of the community -viz, the lower classes is an
evil so
deeply seated that no human ingenuity can reach it. The palliative he
suggested
was the "total abolition of all the present parish laws" to facilitate
free
movement of labour as dictated by the commands of the market. For
those beyond
the pale of what demographers rather aseptically call push and pull
factors,
namely, those who for reasons of ill health, age and debility, could
not respond
to the beckoning of market forces, Malthus recommended workhouses.
These
workhouses were to be made as unattractive as possible in order to
distinguish
the deserving from the non deserving poor, the latter could not be
admitted into
the workhouses. He recommended "the fare should be hard, and those
that were
able to obliged to work". 6
In the second edition of his work, published in 1803, Malthus' tone
was more
assured, more 'scientific' and less polemical. But while the principle
of
population as natural law, provided the scientific basis for Poor Law
reform,
the second edition argued that the poor had no moral right to relief.
A man who is born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get
subsistence
from his parents on whom he has a just demand, and if the society do
not want
his labour, has no right [emphasis added] to the smallest portion of
food, and
in fact, has no business to be where he is. At nature's mighty feast
there is no
vacant cover for him. She tells him to be gone and will execute her
own orders,
if he do not work upon the compassion of some of her guests. If these
guests
getup and make room for him, other intruders immediately appear
demanding the
same favour. These guests learn too late their error, in counteracting
those
strict orders to all intruders issued by the great mistress of the
feast, who,
wishing that all guests should have plenty, and knowing that she could
not
provide for unlimited numbers, humanely refused to admit fresh comers
when her
table was already full. [Malthus, cited in Meek 1977].
What is all too often forgotten in examining the work of Malthus is
that it is
primarily a tract against the 'Utopian Socialist' of the age, namely,
Godwin and
Condorcet.7. His work was, in the first instance a rejoinder to the
ideas of the
perfectibility of mankind advanced by them. In other words, it was a
political
tract against the hopes for social progress aroused by the French
Revolution of
1789 and the collapse of the Ancien Regime [Harvey 1974]. Indeed the
frontispiece of the first edition of the Essay on the Principle of
Population as
It Affects the Future Improvement of Society with Remarks on the
Speculations of
Mr. Godwin, M Condorce and Other Writers. Malthus wrote:
Godwin's work on Political Justice is to show that the greater part of
the vices
and weaknesses of men proceed from the injustice of their political
and social
institutions and that if these were removed and the understandings of
men more
enlightened, there would be little or no temptation in the world to
evil.
However, this is entirely a false conception, and independent of any
political
or social institutions whatever, the grater part of mankind, from the
fixed and
unalter-able laws of nature (viz, the law of population) must ever be
subject to
the evil temptations arising from want.
The French Revolution, with its rallying cry of 'libertie, egalite and

fraternitie' aroused great hopes for the advancement of mankind among
some
sections of the population. Wordsworth, for example, wrote, "Bliss was
it that
dawn to believe" when he heard of the storming of the Bastille. The
Revolution
also aroused great fears in the minds of the propertied. "The
awakening of the
labouring classes after the first shocks of the French Revolution made
the upper
classes tremble", noted Lady Frances Shelley in her diary [quoted in
Thompson
1982]. Lord Cock burn wrote, "Everything rung and was connected with
the
Revolution in France. Everything, not this thing or that thing, but
literally
everything was soaked in this one event". [Meek 1977].
Fears of the mobs taking over were rampant; indeed there was ample
evidence that
these fears were not entirely misplaced and were certainly not
paranoid
[Thompson 1982]. The poor, comprising a motley lot of occupations but
held
together by memories of a communitarian moral economy, and both
distrustful and
hostile to the emergent marker economy, were inspired by a long
tradition of
popular dissent - of Levellers. Deggers, Ranters and Chilianism [Hill
1984].
Groups as miners and self-employed artisans saw wages as a matter of
custom.
They expected prices to be regulated by custom also. The new
'god-given' laws of
supply and demand8 whereby any scarcity led to soaring prices had not
won
popular acceptance. An elaborate code of custom regulated the price,
the size
and the quality of a loaf of bread. And a price rise or any move to
impose
standardised measures resulted in a riot. Bread riots marked the
landscape of
18th century England- with a series of outbreak in 1764, 1766, 1783
and 1788.
[Thompson 1982].
Profoundly influential on the rebellious poor was Paine's Rights of
Man,
published in 1791. As Thompson has noted, "The seed of Rights of Man
was
English; but only the hope brought by the American and French
Revolutions
enabled it to strike". In what was considered the foundation text of
the English
working class movement, Paine thundered.
When the rich plunder the poor of his rights, it become an example to
the poor
to plunder the rich of his property... The aristocracy are not the
farmers who
work the land but are mere consumers of the rent.
Paine then elaborated on a host of social security arrangements, in
addition to
political enfranchisement of the people and the abolition of
hereditary
privilege, as a solution to the problems of the day. These included
general
education, old age pensions, maternity benefits, funeral funds,
unemployment
benefits, etc - not as a matter of grace and favour but of right
[Thompson
1982].
Equally influential and widely circulated was a pamphlet by Alexander
Kilham
entitled The Progress of Liberty. The writings of Voltaire and
Rousseau also
made the rounds. The popularity of such democratic ideals seriously
worried the
establishment. They fond their ideologue, their prophet, in Malthus.
For had he
not 'scientifically' proven that by the etemal law of nature poverty
was
inevitable ? And that the best thing to do about it is to do nothing ?

Malthus' work may also be read as a tract on the inherent nature of
man. The man
that is celebrated, structured created, as the natural man is the
quintessential
bourgeois man, self-seeking, competitive, and heartless; the
"rational"
profit-maximising individual of neoclassical economics. Society, for
him,
comprised an assemblage, an agglomeration of such individuals. It was
'naturally' a "society divided into a class of proprietors and a class
of
labourers" with "self love the main spring of the great machine". It
is not
surprising therefore that Malthus' writings greatly influenced that
other great
figure of the 19th century, Charles Darwin [Flew 1970]. It was, in a
sense,
zeitgeist; but the spirit not so much of an age as of a class that
finds
resonance in Malthus. It must not be forgotten however that in those
troubled
times "a benignant spirit was abroad"9.
It is in the context of the debate on the nature of man and the
perfectibility
of humankind in this volatile period that we must locate Malthus. He
was, then,
one of those who through recourse to 'scientific' laws of eternal and
unchangeable nature, argued against the possibility, indeed the
desirability, of
changing social and political institutions which outlived their days.
Scientific Claims
What in fact was the 'scientific' claim of Malthus ? Does it lie in
the fact
that his language is cloaked in the idiom of the science of the times
? In the
insistent and constant use of rates and ratios ? We read, for example
: "These
operations of what we call nature have been conducted almost
invariably
according to fixed laws. And since the world began, the causes of
population and
depopulation have probably been as constant as any of the laws of
nature with
which we are acquainted". Or again, "It has appeared, that from the
inevitable
laws of nature some human beings must suffer from want. These are the
unhappy
persons who, in the great lottery of life, have drawn a blank".
"The constancy of the laws of nature and of effects and of causes"
writes
Malthus, "is the foundation of all human knowledge"; although he
concedes that
God may change the laws if he so wishes. While Malthus' admiration for
Newton is
acknowledged, less attention has been paid to the influence of 18th
century
positivist science, Newtonian science, on Malthus. Central also is the
concept
of equilibrium, of a stable state of population which is the
equilibrium point
of two forces, the capacity to procreate and the ability to produce
food [Gordon
1991]. This balancing of forces he regarded as an obvious truth'.
This truth is, however, not so obvious. The major propositions, or
assumptions,
that population when unchecked grows in a geometric ratio while food
can grow
only in an arithmetic ratio, the foundation of the Malthusian edifice-
are in
fact entirely arbitrary. It is on the basis of these arbitrary
propositions that
the entirely complex issue of the relationship between resources and
population
is examined. If an empirical observation of society provides evidence
of
poverty, then syllogistically it follows, that there exists population
pressure.
The problem, in other words, is of the method used. A famous analogy
would
illustrate the problem at the very heart of the Malthusian method.
Socrates, unable to bear political persecution due to his supposedly
heretical
writings, committed suicide by drinking hemlock. A logician of
Malthusian
persuasion when asked to examine the cause of his death may argue as
follows :
All men are mortal.
Socrates was a man.
Therefore Socrates is mortal.
This syllogism, used to account for Socrates' death makes no reference
to either
heresy, political persecution or hemlock. The logic of course is
impeccable; and
it is empirically true that all men are mortal as indeed that Socrates
was a
man. A syllogism like the above does not in fact focus on the cause
while
appearing to offer an explanation. To take the syllogistic argument a
little
further.
Drinking hemlock causes death.
Socrates drank hemlock in 399 B C.
Therefore Socrates died in 399 B C.
This syllogism might be acceptable to an expert in forensic medicine
but not to
a social scientist. The apparently logical process here again offers
only a
partial explanation of the cause of the phenomenon under study [Gordon
1991].
Given Malthusian assumptions, the solution to the problem follows
axiomatically.
In other words, out of a complexity of historically determined
variables which
are interactive, this method takes into account an isolated few
variables, makes
some assumptions regarding the behaviour of their relationship, tests
empirically the validity of the outcome of the association and then
arrives at a
deduction of causality. This, clearly, is not methodologically valid.
What
Malthus arrives at is not a theory; he makes certain statements of
facts but
fails to arrive at any coherent explanation.
The problem with Malthus' method becomes more explicit if his work is
examined
in the context of the debate on the Corn Laws - a debate which tore
apart
English society as few issues of the time did. Thompson has noted for
example
that during the passage of the Corn Laws in 1815. "the houses of
Parliament were
defended with troops from the menacing crowds".
The debate on the Corn Laws was related to the debate on free trade
policies, or
as is better known, on laissez-faire policies; it was related also to
a certain
vision of society, which attempts to identify which class in the
nation was the
more dynamic in its contribution to the wealth of the nation. The
rising class
of industrialists, the nouveau bourgeois, were opposed to laws
restricting
import of wheat - the price of which had increased steeply during the
Napoleonic
wars. The landed interests were, however, benefited by the high price
and were
therefore opposed to free trade, to the free import of wheat which
would, in
their view, lower prices. The free traders argued that these laws
increased the
price of food and therefore of the wages that had to be paid. An
increase wage
bill cut into profits; and therefore, it was argued, into capital that
could be
productively invested to increase the wealth of the nation [Meck
1977]. The
industrial class prided itself on its dynamism, vigour, parsimony and
industry.
The landlords were characterised as effect, parasitic rent-seekers,
self-indulgent, non-productive and given to conspicuous consumption.
As the
battle lines were drawn on the Corn Laws, landlords -who then
dominated the
parliament - sought protection from imports while the manufacturing
class sought
free trade [Huberman 1981]. The most famous political economists of
the day-
Malthus and Ricardo - took sides in the battle; the former as a
partisan of
landlord interests and the latter of the manufacturing class.
Malthus in his Principles of Political Economy recognises that there
is a
problem to be solved in the accumulation of capital in society. The
capitalist
saves, invests in production, sells the product at a profit, and
reinvests a
part of the profits to set off yet another cycle of production. He,
however,
needs buyers for the product. This demand for products, Malthus was
certain,
could not emanate from the lower classes; it was self evident that
their
purchasing power was limited. The problem of effective demand was, he
argued,
very crucial in an economy. He argued that effective demand could only
arise
from those classes- landlords and functionaries of the church and
state- who
were outside the production process [Harvey 1974]. Effective demand
emanating
from the unproductive classes of society was therefore a vital force,
both in
stimulating accumulation of capital and in the expansion of
employment. Indeed
labour may be unemployed simply due to the failure of the upper
classes to
consume.
Now this theory of effective demand does not sit easily with the
theory of
population. Malthus advocates in the latter that the power to consume
be
withheld from the lower classes; while in the former he endorses the
incontinent
consumption of the upper classes. He attempts to reconcile this
contradiction by
arguing that the upper classes don't increase their numbers for fear
of coming
down in life; unlike the lower classes who breed imprudently. The law
of
population is consequently disaggregated into one law for the rich and
another
for the poor. This is, in effect, a denial of its power as a natural
law.
Malthus does not explain why effective demand cannot be generated by
increasing
the purchasing power of the labouring classes. He simply dismisses the

possibility as illogical because "no one will ever employ capital
merely for the
sake of demand occasioned by those who work for him". This could
happen in only
one instance: if the labourers "produce an excess of value above what
they
consume". And Malthus denies that this could happen. It is, in fact,
this
concept - that Malthus does not consider - that forms the core of
Marx's concept
of surplus value [Harvey 1974].
In the Essay Malthus does not consider the possibility that more
people can
raise proportionately more food. But in the Principles of Political
Economy he
does examine this as a possibility before dismissing it by focusing
upon the law
of diminishing returns10. While Ricardo made short shrift of the
concept of
effective demand enunciated by Malthus, he accepted Malthus' views on
population
and the law of diminishing returns. The version of population theory
that
Ricardo and his school of political economy utilised was based
explicitly on the
proposition that the law of diminishing returns is an inescapable
property of
agricultural production. But the law of diminishing returns is as
chimerical as
the iron law of wages.
In the words of Engels :
Where has it been proved that the productively of land increased in
arithmetical
progression ? The area of land is limited- that is perfectly true. But
the
labour power to be employed on this area increases together with the
population;
and even if we assume that the increase of output associated with this
increase
of labour is not always proportionate to the latter, there still
remains a third
element- which the economists, however, never consider as important -
namely,
science, the progress of which is just as limitless and at least as
rapid as
that of population [cited in Meek 1977].
Although we cannot, in our times help being cautious about the
boundless
beatitudes of science described by Engels, we are equally unable to
refute the
inapplicability of the law of diminishing returns to conditions of
changing
technology and methods of production.
A detailed examination of Malthus and his work is unavoidable even
most
contemporary discussion of the relationship between resources and
population are
overshadowed by his ideas and methods. We shall briefly take up what
Marx and
Engels had to say on the population question. But before we do so let
us note en
passant that the experience of England in the 19th century when an
increased
population was accompanied by dramatic improvements in standards of
living put
paid both to the iron law of wages and the law of population. The
Malthusian
spectre of population growth was laid law for the time being.
Marxist Critique
Marx and Engels, besides reserving a number of choice epithets for
Malthus,
argue that there is no fixed, universal, eternal law of population.
Marx notes
that social factors create a "law of population peculiar to the
capitalist mode
of production", adding that "In fact every particular historic mode of

production has its own special laws of population, historically valid
within
that particular sphere" [Marx 1976 edition].
Central to capitalism is the surplus value that is generated in the
production
process and is appropriated by the capitalist as interest, profit or
rent. Marx
points out that the working population under capitalism produces both
the
surplus and a "relative surplus population". The relative' surplus
population
"the sized of which varies over time- comprises that section of the
labour force
not imployed by capital currently, depending upon both capital
accumulation and
the technology deployed. Underlying the law of population is therefore
the
compulsions of capitalist production.
The relationship between the rate of capital accumulation, the size of
the
labour force and the technology employed determines what proportion of
the
population is unemployed at any point of time and forms the relative
surplus
population. In order to generate greater accumulation over time, there
is a
change in the composition of capital, a greater part now being
constant capital
(i.e. that which is expended on the technical aspects of production),
with a
shrink in the variable part of capital (i.e; the labour utilised).
Thus it is
    Capitalist accumulation itself that constantly produces, and
produces in the
    direct ratio of its own energy and extent, a relative redundant
working
    population, i. e. a population which is superfluous to capitals
average
    requirement a surplus population [Marx 1976 edition].
Marx adds,
    The labouring population therefore produce, along with the
accumulation of
    capital produced by it, the means by which it itself is made
relatively
    superfluous... If a surplus labouring population is a necessary
product of
    accumulation or of the development of wealth on a capitalist
basis, this
    surplus population also becomes, conversely, the lever of
capitalist
    accumulation, indeed it becomes a condition of existence of the
capitalist
    mode of production. It forms a disposable industrial reserve army,
that
    belongs to capital quite as absolutely as if the latter had bred
it a its
    own cost. Independently or the limits of the actual increase of
population,
    it creates for the changing needs of the self-expansion of
capital, a mass
    of human material always ready for exploitation.
In other words, the production of a relative surplus population and an

industrial reserve army are seen by Marx as being both historically
specific and
internal to the capitalist mode of production. This mass of unemployed
labour
then acts both as disciplining force on the labouring population, and
serves to
depress their wages.
Marx was not arguing that population growth per se was a mechanical
product of
the law of capitalist accumulation, nor was he arguing that population
growth
per se did not affect the situation. But he was arguing very
specifically,
contrary to the position of Malthus and Ricardo, that the poverty of
the
labouring classes was the inevitable product of the capitalist process
of
accumulation. Poverty then was not to be explained away as a natural
condition
for a section of society a natural law.
We have noted that the 19th century English experience of a surge in
population
accompanied by rising per capita income, discredited the ideas of
Malthus. As
England completed its industrial and health revolutions, and as birth
rates
subsequently commenced a secular decline, Malthusianism lost its bite,
its
urgency, and its pungency. It was not, however put to deserved rest.
It
continued to be resurrected as an explanation of poverty in other
parts of the
world. Malthus himself would probably have turned in his grave could
he have
learnt that the influence of his ideas was apparent for instance in
British
government's decision to withhold relief during the famine of 1870 in
India. At
that point India supported one fourth the population it supports
today; a note
on which to turn to Malthus in his resurrected form.
II
India was integrated into the world of capitalism with the Battle of
Plassey in
1757. The colonial loot of the 'jewel' in Britain's crown was both
instantaneous
and staggering. It has been estimated that the treasure taken from
India alone
between Plassey and Waterloo was an astounding 500 million pounds to
1,000
million pounds [Patnaik 1973]. Its impact on the industrial revolution
in
England was equally instantaneous and has been noted in the following
words :
    ... the Bengal plunder began to arrive in London, and the effect
appears to
    have been instantaneous.... At once in 1759, the bank (of England)
issued 10
    and 15 pound notes.... and the industrial revolution began with
the year
    1760 [Adams, cited in Patnaik 1973].
Thus while India provided a large chunk of the capital for England's
industrialisation the process of her own impoverishment and
deindustrialisation
began. And India was "systematically deindustrialised" [Hobsbawm
1977]. and
became in turn a market for Lancashire cottons : In 1820 India took 11
million
yards; by 1840 it already took 145 million yards. Spinners and weavers
in India,
unable to bear the competition, suffered destitution. Spinning and
weaving in
urban India were wiped out; the rural artisans, immiserised, were
ready victims
for the famines which loomed over India in the 19th century.
The ideas of Malthus were resurrected as an explanation of Indian
poverty. As
far back as early in the 19th century European travellers, setting the
tone for
later colonial administrators supervising the plundering of India,
invoked
Malthus as an explanation for poverty in India. For example, we find
the remarks
of Abbe Dubois. After surveying the destruction of the Indian weaving
industry
and the consequent pauperisation of her artisans, and after linking
this to the
mills of England Abbe Dubois writes :
    Of these causes (of misery) the chief one is the rapid increase of

    population. Judging by my own personal knowledge ... of Mysore and
the
    districts of Baramahland Coimbatore, I should say that they
increased by 25
    percent in the last 25 years... Some modern political economists
have held
    that a progressive increase in the population is one of the most
unequivocal
    signs of a country's prosperity and wealth. In Europe this
argument may be
    logical enough, but I do not think that it can be applied to
India; in fact,
    I am persuaded that as the population increases, so in proportion
do want
    and misery. For this theory of the economists to hold good in all
respects
    the resources and industries of the inhabitants ought to develop
rather
    rapidly; but in a country where the inhabitants are notoriously
apathetic
    and indolent, where customs and institutions are so many
insurmountable
    barriers against a better order of things, and where it is more or
less a
    sacred duty to let things as they are, I have every reason to
believe that a
    considerable increase in the population should be looked upon as a
calamity
    rather than as a blessing [Dubois 1906].
Thus is assiduously constructed the image of the Other, of
Orientalism, of
seething poor overpopulated tropics in a swoon of customs and habits,
ineradicable and unchanging [Said 1991]. Colonial policy is exonerated
the
responsibility of creating a relative surplus population in India. In
addition
to the destruction of her cottage industry, British agricultural
policy - of
commercialisation and revenue extraction, through the Permanent
Settlement Act-
impoverished vast sections of the Indian peasantry [Ptnaik 1973]. This

pauperised peasantry did not have the option that their English
counterparts
did, of turning into proletarians, working in the industries, for
British free
trade policies actively hindered indsutrialisation. India was thus
integrated
into the world economy as an exporter of primary commodities with a
virtually
stagnant, vast and immiserised agricultural sector and no industrial
sector to
speak of. The spectre of Malthus loomed large over India even in the
19th
century when there was little population growth and the Indian
population was
stalked by periodic and terrible famines.
Subsequently, in the late 19th century, we witness the birth of a new
'avatar'
of Malthusianism, namely, neo-Malthusianism. Malthusianism and
neo-Malthusianism
are not conceptually or methodologically distinct. They differ insofar
as the
victims of their ideas or methods are concerned. While Malthusiasm was
concerned
with the poor of their own countries, neo-Malthusians looked across
the seas at
the poor in developing countries. And while Malthusians came equipped
with
contraceptive technology. The parents of neo-Malthusianism were the
eugenists
and birth controllers.
Eugenic movement
Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man published in 1871, provided a
significant
measure of inspiration to the birth of the Eugenics Movement [Greer
1984]. The
ideas of competitive struggle, natural selection and the survival of
the
fittest, when applied to human populations had frightening
consequences, not to
mention deep ethical and moral implications. Racial purity and
improvement of
the racial stock were the prime concerns of the Eugenics Movement. The
Eugenics
Movement was named by one of its illustrious founders, a cousin of
Darwin;
Francis Galton, Galton pioneered the use of statistics on human
populations. A R
Wallace, who CO-discovered the process of evolution with Darwin,
argued in an
essay, The Action of Natural Selection on Man :
    At the present day it does not seem possible for natural selection
to act in
    any way so as to secure the permanent advancement of morality and
    intelligence for it is indisputably the mediocre, if not the low,
both as
    regards morality and intelligence who succeed best in life and
multiply
    fastest.
Here again we find a scientist asserting something utterly unproven
and probably
unprovable as something 'indisputably' true. He is obviously stating
something
merely as a matter of faith. He nonetheless inspired Jane Hume
Clapperton who
published the text of eugenics, Scientific Meliorism in 1885. "The
racial
blood," she wrote,
    shall not be poisoned by moral disease. The guardians of social
life in the
    present day dare not be careless of the happiness of coming
generations,
    therefore the criminal is forcibly restrained from perpetuating
his vicious
    breed... The type will disappear whilst evenly balanced natures,
the gentle,
    the noble, the intellectual, will become parents of future
generations, and
    the purified blood and unmixed good in the veins of the British
will enable
    the race to rise above its present level of natural morality. To
promote the
    contentment of congenital criminals within their prison home,
where they are
    detained for life, an alternative to celibacy might be offered,
viz, a
    surgical operation rendering the male sex incapable of
reproduction11 [Greer
    1984].
Francis Galton inaugurated the Eugenics Education Society and brought
out a
journal called Eugenics Review. He was also responsible for the
founding of the
biometrics laboratory at University College, London and its journal
Biometrica.
Galton's passion was the collection of biostatistics and the
collection of data
on the lineage of the pedigreed. He was firmly committed to the idea
that the
brightest and best should be encouraged to breed. Eugenics therefore
had two
sets of action on its agenda: the positive eugenics of Galton and the
negative
eugenics of Clapperton. Those who received the attention of the latter
at one
time or the other were criminals, the mentally retarded, the insane,
the
tuberculous, lepers, alcoholics, epileptics, the feeble minded, the
degenerate,
immigrants and of course the poor, who apparently bred all these
characteristics. For example, it is noted with alarm :
    In Degeneracy healthy aspirations no longer exist, the struggle
for survival
    the higher in the organism against the lower having ceased and the
cells
    having conformed in a mass to a lower grade of being.... There is
no greater
    menace to a race than is furnished by such sturdy degenerates
[Greer 1984].
The IQ test was designed in part to select cases eligible for eugenic
sterilisation.
Eugenics held great appeal for influential people on both sides of the
Atlantic.
A prominent eugenist in Germany wrote,
    Because the inferior are always numerically superior to the
better, the
    former would multiply so much faster - if they have the same
possibility to
    survive and reproduce - that the better necessarily would be
placed in the
    background. Therefore a correction has to be made to the advantage
of the
    better. The nature (sic) offers such a correction by exposing the
inferior
    to difficult living conditions which reduce their number.
Concerning the
    rest the nature (sic) does not allow them to reproduce
indiscriminately, but
    makes a relentless selection according to their strength and
health
    conditions [Hitler, cited in Bondestam 1980].
The 'correction' he offered to nature's lethal ways was called the
final
solution. Adolf Hitler included among others, Jews, communists,
homosexuals and
gypsies in his grand design.
In America the eugenics movement gained momentum early in the 20th
century,
mainly at the instance of natural scientists convinced by Galton that
'genius'
was a heritable characteristic. The rediscovery of Mendel's work in
1900 led to
the formation of the American Breeders Association in 1903. In 1906, a
Eugenics
Section of the Association was established to "emphasise the value of
superior
blood and the menace to society of inferior blood" [Hodgson 1991]. The
American
eugenic movement involved itself with legislation to restrict
immigration for
"unrestricted immigration", especially of those not Anglo-Saxon or
Nordic, was
described as the "annihilator of our native stock". The eugenists were
also
instrumental in initiating legislation and carying out eugenic
sterilsations on
institutionalised mentally subnormal, the epileptic and the psychotic.
Indeed,
the eugenicist Leon F Whitney wrote, "We cannot but admire the
foresight of the
(German) plan (of sterilising 4,00,000 people) and realise by this
action
Germany is going to make herself a stronger nation". He also observed
that "the
negroes furnished six times as many sub-normals as did the native-born
whites".
Let us note that the victims of all this 'scientific' hysteria were
the weak,
the powerless and the helpless. That the eugenist utopia continues to
exert a
powerful attraction, despite being shorn of its scientific halo, is
evident in
even current legislation and practice; regarding, for example, the
introduction
of hormonal implant contraceptives in the US. Women on welfare, with
either a
criminal record or a record of 'child neglect', must have Norplant
implanted in
order to be eligible for welfare. Thus the vast majority of women
subjected to
Norplant are blacks or hispanics [Srinivas 1992].
Meanwhile in London in 1930. the Eugenic Society, encouraged by the
Report of
the Joint Committee of the Board of Education- which found that
"mentally
deficient parents create centres of degeneracy and disease which
welfare work
can never reach" - began concerted lobbying and propaganda for a
Eugenic
Sterilisation Bill. Associated with this effort were a press baron,
the noted
author HGWells, Darwin's son Major Darwin and Julian Huxley. The last,
who later
became a lion of the population control movement. wrote :
The principle of supplementing the segregation of defectives by
sterilisation in
certain cases is to my mind very important, and indeed very essential,
if we are
to prevent the gradual deterioration of our racial stock.
Eugenics was scientifically discredited by that famous biologist (and
friend of
India) J.B. S Haldane. But it was Herman Mueller's discovery of
mutation the
early 1940s that denuded it of the very last vestiges of scientific
respectability. The eugenic lobby now turned to what they called
crypto-
eugenics or population control. In 1956 the British Eugenics Society
decided in
a resolution:
    that the Society should pursue eugenic ends by less obvious means,
that is
    by a policy of crypto- eugenics. The Society's activities in
crypto-eugenics
    should be pursued vigorously, and specifically that the Society
should
    increase its monetary support of the Family Planning Association
and the
    International Planned Parenthood Federation [Greer 1984].
Birth Control movement
This brings us to that other parent of the population control
movement, namely,
the birth control movement. Various streams of thought, jostling
uneasily with
one another, congealed into the birth control movement in the late
19th century.
One stream was that of the radical feminists, tracing their descent in
modern
times to Mary Wollstonecraft's publication in 1792 of The Vindication
of the
Rights of Women. These persons believed, and believed strongly, that
it was
women's right to control their own destinies, their own bodies. Access
to birth
control, then banned, was one element in their larger struggle for
democratic
rights.
The seconds stream was the socialist. Their ideas on birth control
were coloured
by the feeling that the burden of repeated pregnancies was harmful to
the health
of working women; and by the belief that it was in the interests of
capitalists
and not their own to have an unlimited supply of cheap labour. It was
thus in
the ranks of the International Workers of the World that the first
stirrings
demanding free access to contraception arose[Gordon 1976].
The third and important stream, which came to dominate the birth
control
movement was the neo-Malthusian. Finally the last and least
significant was an
offshoot of the Romantic movement, the free lovers who believed in the

liberating powers of the sexual act which, they believed should be
untrammeled
from its association with procreation.
As is obvious, these contending tendencies produced a certain in-built
tension
in the birth control movement. The movement was ultimately taken over
by the
neo-Malthusians by the 1920s. This is attributed partly to the period
of post
first world war reaction; partly to the weaknesses of the socialist
and feminist
movements; and above all to the right-wing fear of communism after the

establishment of the Soviet Union in 1917. This fear was strengthened
in the 30s
when the western world was threatened with a crisis, the Great
Depression, which
the Soviet Union was seen to be able to withstand [Bondestam 1980]. In
the field
of economics the time was ripe for the Keynesian revocation of
Malthusians
theories of population.
Annie Basant and Charles Bradlaugh's trial in 1877 over the
publication of a
book on contraception entitled The Fruits of philosophy was a
cause-celebre to
the birth control movement. Besant herself, before she got involved in
the
esoteric religions of Theosophy and India, published the
neo-Malthusian tract
The Law of Population, carrying advice on what she called marital
prudence. The
notoriety of the Bradlaugh-Besant trial ended the career of the
former, while
Besant went, on with C. R. Drysdale, a medical witness at the trial,
to found
the Neo-Malthusian League in 1877 to
    Agitate for the abolition of all penalties on the public
discussion of the
    population question and to spread among the people by all means a
knowledge
    of the law of population of its consequences, and its bearing on
human
    conduct and morals [Demerath 1976].
A journal was brought out called, appropriately, The Malthusian.
Birth control propaganda was initially aimed at middle class women who
sought to
limit fertility. The philosophy was that it was physically possible
and morally
desirable for husbands and wives to control the size of their
families; and that
the ultimate decision to have one or more children should be made by
parents and
not by tradition, church or state. Soon, however, the ambit was
widened to
include the understanding that a small number of children in a family
is good
for the society as a whole which is otherwise endangered by a rapid
rise of
population.
Margaret Sanger, an American nurse, possibly did more than anybody
else to
ultimately put birth control on the world agenda. Powerful and
influential, she
has been described as the "messiah of medicalised birth control".
While still
involved in the feminist and socialist movement - a heritage she
deeply disowned
in her later years - she brought out a pamphlet, Family Limitation, in
1914. Her
primary aim was to limit what she perceived as the excessive fertility
of the
poor, a view that caused distress and shock to her anarchist mentor
Emma Goldman
from whom she was subsequently estranged. "Large families", Sanger
wrote, "are
associated with poverty, toil, unemployment, drunkenness, cruelty,
fighting,
jails; the small ones with cleanliness, leisure, freedom, light,
space,
sunshine" [Greer 1984]. Her most famous book was the 1920 publication
Women and
the New race, an orthodox tract of eugenics : "First stop the
multiplication of
the unfit. This appeared the most important and greatest step towards
race
betterment."
Even as views such as this alienated her erstwhile associates, it won
favour
among the rich and influential. Sanger was able, in addition, to
attract
attention, if not notoriety, to her cause by her unorthodox tactics.
She founded
the American Birth Control League in 1921, a nationwide organisation
for
medicalised birth control- for Sanger had won over medical
professionals to her
cause. For what distinguished Sanger's efforts from those of the
feminists and
socialists was the professionalisation of birth control [Gordon 1976].
In 1925
she organised the International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control
Conference in
New York bringing together leading eugenists and birth controllers;
and in 1927
the First World population Conference in Geneva bringing together
American and
European eugenists and neo-Malthusians. In 1940 Henry Pratt Fairchild,
president
of The American Eugenics Society, told the annual meeting of the Birth
Control
Federation, the new incarnation of the American Birth Control League :

    One of the most outstanding features of the present conference is
the
    practically universal acceptance of the fact that these two
movements (viz,
    eugenics and birth control) have now come to such a thorough
understanding
    and have drawn so close together as to be almost indistinguishable
[Gordon
    1976].
This momentous marriage had the financial backing of American
corporate capital
that had earlier supported eugenics; Gordon notes that "in no academic
field was
the coalition between corporate capital and scholars developed more
fully than
in eugenics".
In England, meanwhile the ministry of health established a National
Birth
Control Council in 1930; the Council became, in 1931, the National
Birth Control
Association. On the Birth Control Association were several eugenists,
prominent
among them were Julian Huxley and Major Darwin.
Demographic theses
In the 40s and 50s, eugenic ideas were considered embarrassing, close
as they
were to those of the architect of the Nazi holocaust. Population
control,
however, came to occupy a respectable position. This was also a period
for major
shifts in the perspective in the discipline of demography was
concerned with
attempting to understand demographic phenomena. Viewing 19th century
population
changes, research in demography over six decades had crystallised into
a Theory
of Demographic Transition.
This 'theory' held that wide-ranging shifts in a large number of
socio-economic
variables, among others urbanisation, industrialisation, rising
standards of
living, the health revolution, together brought under the rubric of
modernization, had led to a decline of death rates followed, after a
gap by a
decline of birth rates. That is to say demography carried a
perspective that
viewed population as a dependent variable; and socio-economic factors
the
determining independent variables. Demographers observed that the
timing and
extent of western fertility decline had not been related to advances
in
contraceptive technology. In most countries of the west, the spread of

contraceptives had occurred in a hostile environment with both
governments and
religion opposed to it. They had concluded therefore that fertility
declined
when the motivation to have children changed and was not strictly
related to the
ability to control fertility. Motivation changed in response to
structural
changes in the social system; in other words population was determined
by
socio-economic conditions [Hodgson 1991].
The post-second world war baby boom knocked out some of the scientific

credibility of the demographic transition theory [Hodgson 1988].
Leading
demographers now focused on other problems; for example, they pointed
out that
the theory was unable to explain the low birth rates in France and
Bulgaria
prior to industrialisation. What they also did in the process was to
question
the very perspective of the demographic transition theory.
Leading American demographers were now turning their attention to the
non-industrial third world. Kingsley Davis noted an alarming situation
in India
in his influential classic The Population of India and Pakistan [Davis
1968]. He
observed that British colonial policy, replacing the savage rule of
natives with
their penchant for 'hereditary plunder', had brought civilisation to
India. As a
consequence of their benevolent health policy, death rates had
declined, but had
not been followed by declines in the birth rate. A population problem
therefore
loomed large. The decline in death rate, Davis noted, had not depended
upon
general economic development as in the west. It had occurred due to
the:
    Diffusion of death control techniques which did not depend on the
diffusion
    of other cultural elements or basic changes in the institutions
and customs
    of the people affected [Davis 1956].
He highlighted the 'paradoxical' association of rapid population
growth and
continued widespread poverty, a 'grotesque' example of 'human
self-frustration'.
He argued that "economic development alone cannot be counted on to
save a
situation over which it has so little control and by which it is
itself so
greatly influenced".
American economists during this period, the 1950s, emphasised the role
of
capital accumulation in the development process. Undevelopment was a
condition
of little capital stock in the workforce; development was a process of
adding to
that stock. It was self-evident to development economists that rapid
population
growth induced high dependency ratios in a country. This increased the
need for
investments in social sectors such as education and health, and
thereby
curtailed the capital available for more direct productive
investments. A high
dependency ratio also cut into the rate of saving in the economy. The
country
was thus caught in a vicious cycle of poverty-high population growth
rates-low
savings-low productivity-poverty.
Some economists developed models describing a 'low-level equilibrium
trap' in
which population growth precluded growth of per capita income. Coale
and Hoover
quantified the economic costs of continued high fertility and found it

considerable [Coale 1958]. Coale also pointed out that the post-war
mortality
decline, since it occurred most sharply in the younger age groups, was
actually
further increasing the dependency ratios. Large parts of the
underdeveloped
world were saddled with populations wherein for every one individual
in the
economically active years, there were one or more nonproductive
dependents. This
appeared to be a 'demographic stumbling block' to economic development
[Coale
1956]. Demographers and economists thus fed off each other's fears.
It was not long before demographers began to assert that something
ought to be
done about the population problem. Demography, then, became a policy
science.
Shedding its social science heritage; it became, in this period, more
prescriptive, more activist, less academic, less thoughtful. The
earlier
demographic perspective implied that motivation for curtailing family
size could
not exist in primarily peasant communities. But demographers now
overturned
nearly 60 years of research on the determinants of fertility by
suggesting that
fertility in agrarian societies could be lowered directly through the
use of
contraceptive technology. This vision of the determinants of fertility
was
entirely novel. Was this based on adequate empirical evidence : The
fatally
flawed Khanna Study was one piece of evidence, demonstrably unreliable
and
biased [Wyon 1971]. It was more likely based on Davis' assertion that
in 'rural
sections' of India a women in her 40s "would show a model preference
for two or
three living children".
There were other factors at work shaping these new trends in
demography which
viewed population as the independent variable, and socio-economic
factors as the
dependent variable [Hodgson 1983]. It was these other factors perhaps
which
turned the demographic world upside down. What were the factors which
shaped
this new demographic perspective ?
The post second world war world was one of anti-colonial national
liberation
struggles. Colonialism collapsed in large parts of the globe; post,
colonial
nations rushed to their 'tryst with destiny". As these nations set out
on their
long delayed journey to industrialisation, they were beckoned by the
Soviet
model. The Soviet Union was then the prime 20th century example of
planned and
rapid industrialisation. Indeed in the early 40s the leading American
demographer Notestein had held out the Soviet case as an exemplar of
how to deal
with the 'population problem' [Notestein, cited in Hodgson 1988].
The example of a backward nation achieving planned and rapid
industrialisation
was heartening to demographers who believed that indsutrialisation and

modernisation necessarily preceded fertility decline. But when
America's war
ally grew to be her most feared competitor in the cold war era, and
when the
third world became the arena of this competition, such a line of
thought-
particularly in the paranoid McCarthy- years- was no longer possible.
Population
growth in these third world countries was now a source of horror;
inseparable
from the probable political consequences envisioned. The establishment
of a
communist state in China injected a note of urgency to these worries.
The ruling
classes in the first world were acutely aware that the third world was
the
source of raw materials that they must continue to have access to; the
defection
of these nations would be a blow to their economic interests.
Kingsley Davis described the "uncommitted" third of the world as a
"prize to be
won in the struggle between the Communist and the free worlds" [Davis,
cited in
Hodgson 1988]. Davis also noted :
What the United States would like to see them (the leaders of the
underdeveloped
countries) do is to foster peaceful and democratic industrialsation, a
rising
level of living, and, in general, adherence to our side. To this end
we have
given or lent money for agriculture, industry, transportation, public
health and
arms. We have maintained that this is a effective way to head off
Communism
because, as we say, chronic poverty breeds Communism. This reasoning
has much to
commend it, but it ignores population trends and thus runs the danger
of
underestimating or misinterpreting the requirements for economic
development
(emphasis mine).
Davis, like other western demographer, was attempting to influence US
policy-makers to include population control as a component of US aid
by playing
on their fears of communism.
At this point demographers such as Davis. Hauser and Tauber drew
attention to
the race between India and communist China, the outcome of which was
thought to
be of great importance to the free world. India was perceived as the
last
bastion of freedom; to be guarded against the communist onslaught in
the pack of
falling dominoes.
American Corporate Funding
Once very significant if not decisive, influence on the shape of
demography and
the growth of the population control lobby was the quantum and nature
of
funding. We had earlier noted that eugenics had attracted American
corporate
capital. With the co-option of eugenics into the population control
movement,
funds began flowing, initially from the Ford Foundation and
Rockefeller
Foundation, into both demography as an academic discipline and its
policy
counterpart, the population control lobby. Between 195 and 1975, the
Ford
Foundation had spent more that 150 million dollars on population
control. Of
this, about 80 million went into research and training in reproductive
biology.
About 35 million was used to finance family planning programmes. India
received
more than 20 million dollars [Domerath 1976].
Hodgson notes that:
    the expenditures on demography had a profound impact. In 1950 it
was taught
    at the graduate level in only three places. Seven additional
programmes were
    added between 1951 and 1961; nine more between 1961 and 1967. From
1952 to
    1968 a dozen population centres in the United States were the
recipients of
    major Ford Foundation funding.
In 1952 John D Rockerfeller, a major actor in the arena of population
control,
established the Population Council. The Population Council stepped in
to aid
demography's rapid growth with its fellowship programme and by
institutional
grants. These funds changed a small group of scholars, sharing an
interest in a
subject, into a substantial group of researchers attempting to resolve
a crisis
of their own making. Foundations also funded the establishment of
population
programmes as American universities with special fellowships for third
world
students. These students were trained here to view fertility as a
variable
capable of being manipulated by contraceptive technology; a variable
which could
be moulded into a solution to the problem of poverty in their
societies. Leading
third world demographers were thus trained to imbibe and share the
perception of
the West on the population problem and its solutions.
Journals dealing with demography were also funded by monopoly capital.
The
Population Council published Studies in Family Planning and Population
and
Development Review; the Ford Foundation provided the seed capital for
Demography; and that handmaiden of US foreign policy then engaged in
containing
communism in Vietanam, USAID, funded the International Family Planning

Perspective [Hodgson 1988].
India has always been at the forefront of the attention of population
controllers. We had noted earlier the comments of the French priest
Abbe Dubois,
perception which deeply influenced colonial administrator. The 1891
Census
Report, for example, invoked Malthus to contend that overpopulation
was
responsible for Indian Poverty [Banerji 1985]. This was then repeated
in
subsequent censuses also. Patnaik points out that in the Indian
subcontinent
population growth is a relatively recent phenomenon; it dates back to
the 20s
and makes its appearance only on comparison of the censuses of 1921
and 1931.
The stagnation of the economy preceded this period by decades: He
points out
that between approximately 1860 and 1910, the per capita income at
1948-49
prices is estimated to have increased by approximately a rupee per
year [Patnaik
1973].
Focusing on population growth as an explanation for Indian poverty is
therefore
seriously misleading. It nonetheless held great appeal to not only
colonialists
but leading sections of the Indian population. For example, Wattal's
influential
work, entitled The Population Problem in India: A Census Study,
published in
1916, commences with Malthus' law of population, concluding that the
"alarming"
growth of Indian population was responsible for widespread poverty and

ill-health [Wattal 1934]. It has been observed that by the 30s
"significant
layers of the native elites adopted neo-Malthusain views" [Mass 1974],
Margaret
Sanger therefore had a ready and receptive audience.
The first family planning clinic in India was opened in 1925 by Darve
who later
went on to assist in the formulation of official policy as a member of
the
National Sub Committee on Population. The Indian chapter of the
neo-Malthusian
League was inaugurated in Madras in 1928 [Base 1983]. In 1930, the
world's first
government- sponsored birth control clinic was inaugurated at the
behest of the
Maharaja of Mysore. Madras followed with the establishment of birth
control
clinics in state hospitals in 1933. In 195 in Bombay the Family
Hygiene Society
was established; the Society brought out a journal quaintly entitled
The Journal
of Marriage Hygiene. In the same year Sanger undertook a triumphant
nationwide
tour, winning friends and influencing people, although she left
Mahatma Gandhi
singularly unimpressed. One such apostle, Lady Dhanvantri Rama Rao,
invited her
to address the All-India Women's Conference [Lakshmanna 1988].
In 1938 Lady Rama Rao and Margaret Sanger organised the First Family
Hygiene
Conference in Bombay. In this task they were assisted by an Indian
millionaire
whose American wife shared Sanger's conviction that India was poised
at the
precipice of a population explosion and had therefore established the
Watamull
Foundation to control it [Greer 1984}. Also in 1938, the Indian
National
Congress established a National Planning Committee under the
chairmanship of
Jawaharlal Nehru. The deliberations of one of the subcommittees
chaired by
Radhakamal Mukherjee, were devoted to the question of population. Its
concerns
were largely eugenic in nature. It deplored the fact that "attention
to eugenics
or race culture are matters hardly yet in the public consciousness of
this
country" and went on to say :
Man, who has come to the stage of development where he is anxious to
breed
carefully such species of the lower animals as dogs or horses to
obtain very
specific qualities in particular specimens of the species, has not
yet, realised
apparently the possibilities in herent in carefully scientific
breeding of the
human race [National Planning Committee 1948].
The second world war diverted the attention of planners from such
concerns. But
in 1949 the Family Planning Committee was formed in Bombay with Lady
Rama Rao as
president. In 1951 it was renamed the Family Planning Association of
India The
EPAI has been a major force shaping population policy in the country.
Indeed it
takes credit for "playing an active role in inducing the first
planning
Commission to incorporate family planning in health' [EPAI 1975].
Financial
assistance to the FPAI is largely provided by international agencies,
particularly the Rockefeller Foundation supported IPPF; in 1982 the
FPAI
received a project grant of US dollars 2,782,000.
It was in this period - the 50s.- that the population control lobby
was
consolidated. Hugh M Moore, an American millionaire, established the
Hugh Moore
Fund which published a pamphlet called The Population Bomb in 1954.
The Ford
Foundation joined Moore and Rockefeller in their activities. In 1952,
Margaret
Sanger and Lady Rama Rao launched the International Planned Parenthood

Federation (IPPF) in Bombay. One of the most influential people
invited to this
conference was the eugenist C P Blacker who set the agenda :
Nor need we question that a husband and wife living in squalor and
ignorance who
already have a large number of children not being reared properly
might well be
considered unfit to have additional children. Yet many parents of
these various
unfit types keep producing unduly large numbers of children, chiefly
because
through ignorance or indifference- and often against their will-they
let Nature
take its course. To combat this situation, eugenists favour the spread
to birth
control [Greer 19845].
The IPPF has been a major force in the population control movement
across the
globe. The funding for the IPPF initially came from the Hugh Moore
Fund and
Rockefeller Foundation. Soon it attracted funding from DuPont
Chemicals,
Standard Oil and Shell. On the board of IPPF sit representative of
DuPont, U S
Sugar Corporation, General Motors, Chase Manhattan Bank, Newmont
Mining,
International Nickel. Marconi RCA, Xerox and Gulf Oil, a veritable
Who's Who of
America's corporate and finance capital.
The Rockefeller Foundation and The Milbank Memorial Fund founded an
office of
Population Research in Princeton University. The office included
leading
demographers such as Kingsley Davis and Frank Notestein. When
Rockefeller
founded the Population Council both these demographers took up
employment there
[Gordon 1976]. Hugh Moore founded the World Population Emergency
Campaign in
1960 with funds from his foundation and from DuPont. The campaign was
run by the
then president of the World Bank. The primary aim of the World
Population
Emergency Campaign was to create and reinforce First World fears of a
population
explosion in Third World countries [Geoge 1976]. It has been suggested
that the
revolution in Cuba provided additional impetus to these fears [Mass
1974]. The
emergency campaign and the population council began a systematic and
forceful
campaign to influence US policy-makers to include population control
as a
component of US aid to third world countries.
This campaign bore fruit in 1966, when president Johnson included a
commitment
of federal funding for population control. The president observed :
"Let us act
on the fact that less than five dollars invested in population control
is worth
a hundred dollars invested in economic growth: John D Rockefeller
emphasised the
limitations of private efforts at population control hitherto employed
and
called for greater governmental participation: "The problems of
population are
so great, so important, so ramified and so immediate that only
government,
supported and inspired by private initiative, can attack them on the
scale
required" [Doyal 1981].
In other words, two developments followed the grant of government
support for
population control : one, the amount of funds available increased
enormously and
second, the private foundation shifted some of the costs to the
American
tax-payer who had by now been convinced that population growth in
Third World
countries ate into the world's resources. The US government now began
to expend
massive funds on population control. Expenditure increased from 4.6
million
dollars in 1965 to 14.7 million dollars in 1969; USAID funding
increased from
10.5 million in 1965 to 45.5 million in 1969 and 123 million by 1972
[Caldwell
1986].
At the same time, changes in American policy began to exert an
influence on the
United Nations. By the late 60s a number of UN and multinational
agencies,
including the UNFPA and the World Bank, were involved in population
control
programmes in Third World countries. The president of the World Bank,
Robert
McNamara explained :
    My responsibility as president of the World Bank compels me to be
candid.
    Are we to solve this problem by famine ? Are we to solve it by
riot, by
    insurrection, by the violence that desperately starving men can be
driven to
    ? [Mass 1974].
The World Bank officially stated :
    All such activity arises out of the concern of the Bank for the
way in which
    the rapid growth of population has become a major obstacle to
social and
    economic development in many of our member states. Family planning

    programmes are less costly than conventional development projects
[Mass
    1974].
Neo-Malthusianism had thus arrived on the world agenda. Inevitably,
India-always
at the forefront of the family planning movement's field of vision-
saw
neo-Malthusianism thrust forcefully on its official policy and
programmes. They
not only funded research but were also involved in training
demographers,
doctors and statisticians. It is not surprising then that large and
influential
sections of Indians fervently uphold these neo-Malthusian ideas. We
shall now
briefly examine what the conceptual, methodological and empirical
problems with
neo-Malthusianism are.
Neo-Malthusianism
We had earlier noted that in terms of methodology neo-Malthusianism
and
Malthusianism are not distinct. The earlier critique of Malthusian
methodology,
therefore, applies equally to neo-Malthusianism. The critique, in
short, is that
it misses the wood for the trees. It focuses on a part of the larger
picture,
misjudges association for cause, provides misleading and partial
explanations
and is based entirely on the validity of the assumptions made.
Hodgson, for
example, notes that when the 'catastrophe' predicted by neo-Malthusian
'orthodox
demographers' never arrived, their assumptions were subject to
scrutiny, with
startling results [Hodgson 1988]. Coale's model had measured the costs
of high
dependency ratios and had found them considerable. But Paul Schultz
found no
clear relationship between the percentage of gross national product
invested in
education and the age structure of the population [Schultz, cited in
Hodgson
1988].
Demographers assumed that high fertility would produce low rates of
saving but
Kelley (1973) found the actual relationship more complicated. Mason
(1988)
confirmed Kelley's findings that children were not just a short-term
source of
expenditure for parents: they could often be along-term form of 'risk
protection' [Cain 1983] or even a king of savings.
One important underpinning of the neo-Malthusian argument is that
population
growth eats into resources which are finite, that some resources are
limited as
a truism. But what the more general and abstract statement above does
is gloss
over the actual picture on who is actually consuming the resources.
Social
problems – of poverty and hunger – are then attributed to that part of
the
population which is said to grow the fastest. But this is precisely
the
population which consumes the least, totally as well as per capita.
This is true
from both national and international perspectives.
It is argued for instance that a reduced population will ceteris
paribus will
lead to reduced energy consumption, less resource use and less
pollution. This
is strictly true in ceteris paribus arguments alone; ceriris paribus
cannot be
used in reality. In reality, according to UN sources, consumption of
energy in
coal equivalents in 1975 amounted to 10,999 kilogrammes per capita per
annum in
the US; and to 221 kilogrammes in India per capita per annum [Hofsen
1980]. The
prevention then of one American birth is as important as the birth of
50 Indians
in terms of energy use. Yet population controllers worry about the
growth of the
Indian population.
The rich nations of the globe constituting 18 percent of the
population consume
66 percent of the gross world product, whereas the poorer nations of
the globe
with 50 percent of the world's population consume 14 percent of the
gross world
product [Bondestam 1980]. Populations growth in the periphery is a
drop in the
ocean compared to the consumption of the populations of rich nations.
Neo-Malthusian views focusing on birth rates in the periphery obscure
this
critical issue. They divert attention from the fact that resources are
being
exploited in the third world by first world nations, and that there is
a net
transfer of resources from the developing world to the industrialised
world
which is of the order of 40 to 50 billion dollars every year [UNICEF
1992]. This
does not occur naturally, fortuitously or automatically; it is the
product of
social, economic and political institutions, both in the first world
and the
development world. In other words, the ruling classes in the third
world are
part and parcel of this arrangement of the utilisation of resources.
If we consider intra-national figures in India, for instance, the
figures are
equally startling. The bottom 20 per cent of the population has a
share of about
8 per cent in total consumption expenditure in the rural sector and
about 7 per
cent has a share of about 39 per cent in the rural sector and 42
percent in the
urban [Bardhan 1974]. It is simply not true that the poor are
consuming
resources disproportionately. What the data also indicate is that by
cutting
down the numbers in the lower decile groups, which is the avowed
objective of
population control, the quantum of resources generate would be
minuscule [Qadeer
1977]. The inescapable conclusion is that population control is not
even an
efficient or effective way of raising resources. There are more
effective ways
to raise these resources, even within the same sociopolitical set-up.
Demographic trends in the developing countries have quite clearly
revealed the
conceptual and empirical weaknesses of noe-Malthusianism. Bauer (1984)
observed
:
    Both economic history and the contemporary scene make clear that
the
    conventional reasoning fails to identify the principal factors
behind
    economic achievement. Rapid population growth has not inhibited
economic
    progress either in the West or in the contemporary Third World.
The
    population of the Western world has more than quadrupled since the
middle of
    the 18th century. Real income per head is estimated to have
increased by the
    factor of five. Most of the increase of incomes took place when
population
    increased as fast, or faster than in most of the contemporary less
developed
    world. Similarly, in what is now called the third world,
population growth
    has often gone hand- in- hand with rapid material advance.
Simon (1984) called attention to the large body of scientific work
showing an
absence of the supposed negative relationship between population
growth and
economic growth in the long run. And the effect of higher population
density
actually seems to be positive.
In the same vein, Preston (1984), observing the association of rapid
population
growth accompanying increasing rates of per capita income growth in
large parts
of the development world, concludes that "rapid population growth in
most times
and places is a relatives minor factor in reducing per capita income
and other
measures of welfare". Indeed it has been suggested on the basis of
empirical
evidence that population growth may in fact be desirable as it appears
to
accelerate technical change and innovation [Boserup 1981].
The near-zero correlation between population growth and per capita
economic
growth in the Third World, which became apparent in the 70s and the
80s, had in
fact been noted 20 years earlier by Kuznets (1967) and Easterlin
(1967). But in
the full tide of neo-Malthusianism had been largely ignored.
Anthropologists and sociologists, meanwhile, also pointed out the
gross
limitations of a neo-Malthusian understanding of the population
question.
Caldwell concluded that the most critical factor was the motivation to
bear
children. In most primarily agricultural societies, this
motivation–moulded by
social-structural factors–was limited [Caldwell 1986]. Mamdani carried
out a
brilliant critique of the neo-Malthusia Khanna Study. He not only drew
attention
to the conceptual and methodological weaknesses of this very
influential study
but hinted at, with evidence, fraudulence. He showed that despite
evidence to
the contrary, the study had come to pre-determined conclusions. In
other words
neo-Malthusianism had proven to be a theoretical red herring. His own
study
unearthed the contrary evidence; that people are not poor because they
have
large families but on the contrary they require large families because
they are
poor. The poor peasant's decision not to accept contraception was a
rational one
for that would mean "courting economic disaster" [Mamdani 1973].
Djurfeldt and Lindberg furnished data questioning the belief in the
high
fertility of marginalised peasants. They too highlighted the economic
and social
need for children in such groups in a marginalised peasant economy
[Djurfeldt
1980]. George (1976). Zurbrigg (1984), Doyal (1918) and Meillasoux
(1974)
reached similar conclusions.
In addition, for a variety of reasons, support to demography and to
population
control were withdrawn during this period. The stock market collapse
of the
early 70s had apparently 'dramatically altered' financial support.
Further there
was a consolidation of right-wing forces during this period as
exemplified by
the election of Ronald Reagan as president. There was therefore a
withdrawal of
both government and private foundation funding to population control.
Financially lean but academically more fit, demography became, once
again, a
more reflective science in the US. Demographers began to disown the
heritage of
Davis and Notestein–who increasingly came in for attack by feminists
who
labelled them 'eugenic demographers'.
But facts, in this case are not enough; their existence has not laid
to rest the
shadow of neo-Malthusianism in practice. The same familiar ideas of
neo-Malthusianism enfold, like a shroud, both discourse and policy on
family
planning in India.
Neo-Malthusianism fails to recognise that motivation to practise
family planning
is dependent on the socio-economic situation of parents, which in turn
alters
the determinants of family size. It also fails to recognise that these

determinants vary among different sections of the population. In other
words,
birth rates do not possess geographical or national characteristics;
they are
determined or moulded by the behaviour of the determinants of family
size which
vary among different sections of the population, depending on
socio-economic
factors. The family planning programme in India, which fails to
recognise this
fact, seems doomed not to learn its lessons from history.
Malthusianism and neo-Malthusianism offer an excessively simplistic
understanding of the complex relationship of resources and population;
an
understanding which has proven to be a theoretical red herring.
Despite their
flimsy conceptual, methodological and empirical foundations, these
theories have
won widespread acceptance in both academic and public policy circles.
This
acceptance is explained by factors both manifold and complex, some of
which have
been discussed in this article. The problems faced by the Indian
family planning
administrative or strategical. The neo-Malthusian understanding of the

population issue lies at the heart of the programmes' failure.



Dr. Mohan Rao is in the department of Social and Community Health at
Jwaharlal
Nehru University, New Delhi.
First published in the Economic and Political Weekly.



Notes
1 Note for example even the monumental and scholarly work of Robert
Cassen,
India : Population, Economy, Society, Macmillan, London, 1980.
2. Malthus acknowledges Steuart in the second edition of his Essay.
But the
acknowledgment is, in a sense, superfluous. For even a casual reading
of his
text reveals similarities, the use of the metaphor of a tree is a
striking
example.
3. That this, in effect, undermines his entire argument, is not
something
Malthus chooses to ponder about.
4. The shadow of Malthus falls heavily on the deliberations of the
Bhore
Committee which shaped the development of health and family planning
services in
post-colonial India
5. The tale of Robin Hood and his merry men, robbing the rich and
giving to the
poor, is the glamourised, mythlogised, account of this phenomenon of
the
immiserisation of a section of the peasantry in the wake of the
commercialisation of agriculture in England.
6. Hobsbawm tells us the labrourer in a workhouse "had to separate
from wife and
child in order to discourage the sentimental and unMalthusian habit of

thoughtless procreation" and that "The Poor Law of 1834 was designed
to make
life so intolerable for the rural paupers as to force them to migrate
to any job
that offered. And indeed they began to do so."
7. condorcet was the Marquis de Condorcet. His famous work was the
Esquisse d'un
Tableau Historique De Progres de'Espirit Humain, roughly translatable
as the
'Sketch of the Historical Tableau of the Progress of the Human
Spirit',
published in French in 1794 and in English translation the following
year. He
was an active participant in the French Revolution of 1789. In this
book he
outlines 10 stages of human civilisation, the last with universal
brotherhood of
all the people of the world, liberated from inequalities of race,
gender and
class. William Gowin was the influential father-in-law of the poet
Shelley. His
book Enquirey Concerning Political Justice was published in 1793, with
second
and third editions in 1796 and 1798. Daniel Malthus, the father of
Thomas
Malthus, was deeply enchanted with these visionary works which he
urged his son
to read, Malthus, politically conservative, wrote his Essay as a
rejoinder.
8. Hobsbawm writes wryly of this period : 'There was an order in the
universe,
but it was no longr the order of the past. There was only one God,
whose name
was steam and spoke in the voice of Malthus. McCulloch, and anyone who
employed
machinery".
9. William Wordsworth in a walk with a friend encountered a hungry
peasant girl.
Moved, he wrote the poem 'Beaupuy':
And at that sight my friend,
In agitation said, Tis against that
That we are fighting.' I with him believed
That a benignant spirit was abroad
Which might not be withstood, that poverty
Abject as this would in a little time
Be found no more, That we should see the earth
Unthwarted in her wish to recompense
The meek, the jowly, patient child of toil,
All institutes for ever blotted out
That legalised exclusion, empty pomp
Abolished, sensual state and cruel power,
Whether by edict of the one or few:
And finally, as sum and crown of all,
Should see the people having a strong hand
In framing their own laws: whence better days
To all mankind.
wordsworth was of course recalling the glorious hopes aroused by the
French
Revolution.
10 This law asserts that if production is carried out with different
'factors of
production'. and if some of these factors are constant in amount, then
an
increase in the other factors will increase production but not
proportionately.
11. Tender-hearted social workers who may well wince at the crudity of
the above
may note the views of Tara Ali Gaig, head of the Indian delegation to
the UN
Population Conference at Bucharest and chairman of the Indian Council
of Child
Welfare. "Sterilisation of one partner", she said "has to be made
imperative
where a man or woman suffers from hereditary insanity,
feeble-mindedness or
congenital venereal disease; they must be barred by law from
procreating
children. This should have been done decades ago. If children's lives
and future
are to be protected, compulsory sterilisation in necessary for many
reasons...
After all considering the crime against children committed by
irresponsible
parenthood compulsory sterilisation is hardly punitive. Sterilisation
of the
unfit is long overdue" Greer cites this as a typical upper class
Indian reaction
of revulsion for the poor and disadvantaged [cited in Greer 1984]
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