The phenomena of population constitute the domain of a special science, demography, which was one of the earliest of the modern social sciences to emerge. It played an important part, in the eighteenth century, in stimulating the growth of other social sciences, and it has remained closely associated with sociology. For the demographer, as soon as he goes beyond measurement and calculation to study the causes or consequences of population changes, differential fertility and mortality, and similar problems, enters the domain of sociology. The most interesting demographic problems have always involved social factors of the kind with which sociology is concerned.
At the same time, it is evident that for the sociologist the size, distribution and qualities of the population are basic data. Durkheim made population size one of the principal elements in that branch of sociology which he called social morphology. Societies can be classified according to their volume and density. By volume Durkheim meant the number of ‘social units’ (i.e. individuals) in the society. By density Durkheim meant the ‘number of social relationships’ in a society; he distinguished between material density influenced by the concentration of population, the growth of towns and the development of means of communication, and moral density, which is measured by the number of individuals who effectively have relations (not merely economic but cultural relations) with each other. Durkheim thought that increased volume generally brought about increased density, and that the two factors together produced variations in social structure. In The Division of Labour in Society (1893) he set out to show that increase of population produces, through the division of labour, a change from a type of society based upon ‘mechanical solidarity’ to one based upon ‘organic solidarity’. Recent sociology has been little concerned with such general relationships between population size and type of social structure, though the problem has been taken up in a different way by D.Riesman in The Lonely Crowd.
More usually, in sociology and other social sciences, population size and population changes have been related to particular aspects of social structure or to particular social phenomena. Thus, a number of sociologists have been concerned with the relation between demographic changes and war.1 There have also been many discussions of the relations between demographic change and economic activity, from Malthus’ Essay on Population, up to recent studies of the influence of population movements upon economic growth, as in W.Arthur Lewis’s The Theory of Economic Growth.2
It has always been recognised that there is a reciprocal relation between population and social structure; i.e. that the social structure influences population changes as well as being affected by them. Indeed, sociological study in this field has been predominantly concerned with the social influences upon population size. There is now a very large literature on these questions, and it is impossible to do more than summarise the principal results. The actual problems vary, of course, from one type of society to another. Western demographers and sociologists have been chiefly interested in the social factors influencing the decline in the birth rate, which has slowed down the rate of population growth and at one stage seemed likely to produce stationary or even declining populations. The various social factors have been distinguished and analysed in a large and increasing literature. We may mention here the studies by Alva Myrdal, Nation and Family (London 1945); A.M.Carr-Saunders, World Population (Oxford 1936), D.V.Glass, Population Policies and Movements in Europe (Oxford 1943), and the recent study made in Britain by the Royal Commission on Population.3 The Royal Commission’s report lists and examines some of the influences which promoted family limitation; the references are to British experience but very similar influences must have been operative elsewhere. It is clear that improved methods of birth control and more general knowledge of such methods were important in making family limitation easy. But the desire to limit family size had other causes; among them the resentment felt by women against excessive child bearing and the emancipation of women which allowed their protest to become effective, the declining importance of the family as a productive unit and the increasing economic burden of children (as a result of restrictions upon child labour and the spread of compulsory education), the growth of new wants which competed with
1For a general discussion of different theories of war, including demographic theories, see Quincy Wright, A Study of War (Chicago 1942, 2 vols.).
2There is a general survey of population theories with reference to ‘optimum population’ and resources in E.F.Penrose, Population Theories and Their Application (Stanford 1934).
3Report of the Royal Commission on Population, London, H.M.S.O., 1949.
the desire for children, the raising of standards of parental care and especially the desire of parents to give their children the best possible start in life. The last influence was itself affected by the opportunities for social mobility in an expanding economy and in a less rigidly stratified society; only by limiting births could each child be given the fullest opportunities to rise in the social hierarchy. Many recent studies have demonstrated the advantages, in this respect, of the child from a small family. One other feature of family limitation is apparent from all the studies; it began in the higher strata of society, and only gradually spread to the lower strata. This could be explained partly in terms of differences in knowledge, but the adoption of birth control in the higher strata still needs some other explanation. A recent study1 suggests that, in Britain, family limitation in the middle classes began with the economic recession of the 1870’s which threatened their new standards of comfort. Its gradual extension to other strata could then be explained by imitation of a social model, as well as by the perception of the advantages of a small family in the competitive struggle for economic and social advancement.
Demographers and sociologists have been concerned with the distribution of the population, as well as with its size. The outstanding phenomenon of recent times, in Western Europe and America, but increasingly throughout the world, is the growing concentration of population in urban areas, as one effect of industrialization. This has encouraged studies of the conditions favourable to the growth of towns, and attempts to construct a typology of towns by comparative enquiry. It has been recognized that the existence of towns depends in the first place upon the existence of an economic surplus, and that their growth is affected by the growth of industry, trade and administration. The relations between urban centres and the countryside have varied from one type of society to another. At most times towns have been dependent upon the country, they have not been dominant in the society as a whole, and they have been subject to variations in size and importance. Only in modern industrial societies has urbanism become the predominant way of life. In many societies, too, there has been conflict between town and country; Pirenne in his Medieval Cities showed the role played by the European towns, especially in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, in dissolving feudal social relationships and challenging the feudal social order. Ibn Khaldun, in his Universal History contrasted tribal with city life and outlined a theory of the conflict between sedentary city
dwellers and nomadic tribes to explain the rise and decay of Arab cities.
In another aspect demography has extended into human geography and urban sociology, with the study of social phenomena in relation to the concentration of population. The major characteristics are the existence of distinct zones and sectors in urban areas, distinguished by economic, class, ethnic and other features, differences between urban and rural areas in respect of such phenomena as crime, divorce and suicide, and also more generally in the types of social relationship and in cultural outlook. The notion of zones and sectors in the city was developed largely by R.E.Park, E.W.Burgess and others belonging to what came to be called the ‘ecological school’ in the USA. R.E.Park distinguished many different regions within the American city: ‘There are regions …in which there are almost no children…regions where the number of children is relatively very high: in the slums, in the middle class residential suburbs… There are other areas occupied almost wholly by young unmarried people… There are regions where people almost never vote…regions where the divorce rate is higher than it is for any state in the Union, and other regions in the same city where there are almost no divorces… There are regions in which the suicide rate is excessive; regions in which there is…an excessive amount of juvenile delinquency.’1 Another member of this school, H.W.Zorbaugh, in his The Goldcoast and the Slum (Chicago, 1929) studied two extreme regions of the city and contrasted their social characteristics. Recent ecological studies of the city have attempted to provide a general classification into regions combining the notion of concentric zones with that of sectors. One example is P.Chombart de Lauwe’s study of Paris,2 in which concentric zones, elementary units (districts) and the distribution of social classes are treated separately and then combined in a general typology.
Urbanism as a way of life has attracted many students. It is evident from a number of indices—divorce rates, suicide rates, etc.— that there are important differences between town dwellers and those who live in rural areas; and the greatest divergence is to be found in the great cities. Sociologists have attempted to explain these differences in terms of the social situation and group affiliations of town dwellers, but also in terms of the culture of cities. Simmel, in
1R.E.Park, in The Urban Community (ed. E.W.Burgess, Chicago, 1926).
2P.Chombart de Lauwe, et al., Paris et l’agglomération Parisienne (Paris 1952, 2 vols.).
a classical study,1 showed how city life favoured the intellectual development of the individual, and produced a distinct type of person. A more pessimistic account is that of Lewis Mumford, in his Culture of Cities, where the pathological features of city life are emphasised; the isolation of the individual, the fragmentation of his social contacts and his personality, the growth of ennui, frustration, and sense of futility. The principal features of urban life were examined in a more impartial way in L.Wirth’s essay ‘Urbanism as a way of life’.2
The qualitative aspects of population attracted much attention in the nineteenth century, and were studied from two points of view. First, there were the attempts to distinguish between societies in terms of racial or national characteristics, conceived as innate qualities. This approach has generally been abandoned, for little connection has been found between race as defined by physical anthropology and intellectual or temperamental qualities of interest to the psychologist and sociologist. Modern sociological studies of race are concerned with race prejudice and race relations,3 while national character, so far as it is studied at all, is conceived as the outcome of the institutional arrangements of a society, or of the ‘culture pattern’ reflected in individual upbringing, or most frequently as the product of both together.
Secondly, there were the studies of presumed innate differences between individuals or groups within society, which were connected with elite theories (Pareto) or arose from concern about the effects of differential fertility on the quality (physical or intellectual) of the population. In England, the latter concern crystallised in the eugenics movement started by Francis Galton, and continued by Karl Pearson from his position as professor of eugenics in the University of London. All this was connected with a wider intellectual movement of ‘social Darwinism’ influenced by the unfortunate biological analogies formulated by Herbert Spencer. Eugenics
1G.Simmel, ‘Die Grosstädte und das Geistesleben’ in Die Grosstadt, Dresden 1903. In English in P.K.Hatt and A.J.Reiss, Cities and Society [Revised reader in urban sociology] (Glencoe 1957).
2American Journal of Sociology, XLIV, 1938, pp. 1–24. Reprinted in P.K. Hatt and A.J.Reiss, op. cit.
3There is an excellent short survey of the sociological aspects of race in R.Firth, Human Types (2nd edn., London 1956), Ch. 1 ‘Racial traits and mental differences’. See also the UNESCO series of booklets on The race question in modern science’ now republished as a book. On race relations see M.Freedman, ‘Some recent work on race relations: a critique’, British Journal of Sociology, December 1954.
has little connection with modern sociology, but one particular problem has continued to arouse discussion, the assumed relation between differential fertility and the trend of national intelligence. It was supposed that the declining birth rate in the upper strata of society, resulting in their failure to reproduce themselves, might bring about a gradual decline in the general level of intelligence. The problem was carefully reviewed by Sir Cyril Burt in an article published in 1950,1 and has been investigated in a comprehensive survey conducted by the Scottish Council for Research in Education.2 Burt’s conclusion is that some kind of ‘equilibrium’ may have been established and that more research will be needed to determine the character of changes in the national level of intelligence and the factors involved. It seems likely that the improvement in general welfare was an important factor in the result shown by the Scottish survey.
We may fairly conclude that social factors are of great importance, and perhaps of pre-eminent importance, in determining the quality of a population. Racial and other biological accounts are quite clearly inadequate. Differential fertility certainly plays a part in determining the general characteristics of a population, but its influence has not been shown to override that of improved standards of nutrition, medical care, housing, and education.
The study of population problems in India benefits (in comparison with other economically underdeveloped societies) from the existence of much basic information provided by regular censuses, statistical surveys, and a number of independent enquiries.3
1Cyril Burt, ‘The trend of national intelligence’, British Journal of Sociology, I (2), June 1950, pp. 154–68.
2Scottish Council for Research in Education, The Trend of Scottish Intelligence (London 1949), and Social Implications of the 1947 Scottish Mental Survey (London 1953). This survey showed a rise in the general level of intelligence between 1932 and 1947.
3The first (partial) census of India was taken in 1867–72; the second census was in 1881 and there have been decennial censuses since that time. The census reports contain, in addition to population statistics, much information on the social and economic background; and this information is supplemented by the statistical surveys, first undertaken in 1869, and condensed in the Imperial Gazetteer of India (1881), and thereafter published regularly in the Imperial Gazetteer. The most useful general survey of population problems in India is Kingsley Davis, The Population of India and Pakistan (Princeton 1951). For further details on the sources of population study see the Bibliography at the end of this part.
Although in the absence of an effective system of registration of births, deaths and migration some basic data are lacking, it is nevertheless possible to construct a fairly accurate picture of population changes in India over the past eighty years.1
For the period before the first census only estimates of the population are available, and these show such large variations that they cannot reasonably be used for calculating the rate of population growth. They suggest however, that the sustained growth of the population began after 1800, in which year the estimated population of the Indian region, 120 millions, may have been about the same as that of ancient India. After the first census (1867–72) the growth of the population can be traced more accurately.
The population of the Indian Region steadily increased over the period 1871–1941. There is little remarkable in this, for the same process has been going on in most countries of the world. Moreover, the actual rate of growth over the whole period (about 0·6% per year) was slightly below that for the world as a whole, and much
1The picture is, of course, complicated by the 1947 partition of the Indian sub-continent between the two states of India and Pakistan. In the text the distinction between the Indian region and post-partition India will be made explicitly throughout.
below that of many European countries, of the USA, or of Japan, in the same period. The distinctive features of the Indian situation are that the growth of population has been accompanied by a relatively slow rate of industrial development, and that the rate of population growth has risen in recent decades, whereas in the European countries and North America it has fallen. We might say of the Indian region, therefore, that its population problem arises from the fact that a rapid increase of population took place before industrialization was properly under way, and that the prospect is of a continuing rapid increase before the social checks to fertility in advanced industrial societies begin to operate. So far, we have discussed the Indian region; the data of the 1951 and 1961 census, and re-calculations of the data in the 1931 and 1941 censuses show, however, that the observations are applicable to India. In the last decade, 1951–61, the annual rate of increase of the population was 2·2%; and it is expected that this rate will rise to 2·5% during 1961–66. The economic and social implications of such a high rate of growth are extremely serious.
The immediate influences upon population size are fertility, mortality and migration. In the case of India there has been a persistent net loss of population by emigration, but it has been too small to have any important effect upon population size. The important factors have been fertility and mortality. During the present century both the birth rate and the death rate have declined, but the decline has been much more pronounced in the latter. As we have already explained, the calculation of birth rates and death rates for India is difficult because of the inadequate registration system. In the following table decennial averages are shown as calculated from registration particulars, and from estimates by the reverse survival method.
The decline in the death rate may be expected to continue as the social services and especially medical care are extended, and also if the general level of living rises. There can be no such confident expectation about the trend of the birth rate. As yet there is little indication that any powerful social influences are bringing about deliberate family limitation. We showed earlier, with reference to the developed industrial countries, that family limitation began in urban centres and in the higher social strata. But there is little differential fertility of this kind in India. The lower fertility rates in urban areas in India seem to be attributable to the abnormal sex ratio in these areas; with much smaller numbers of females and the absence of wives of young workers. Similarly, although there has been a slight decline in the fertility rates of the higher castes and higher income groups, this again does not seem to be due to the adoption of a small family pattern, but to the more strict observance of caste rules concerning widow-remarriage.1
A number of writers on India have either ignored the population problem, or have argued that the growth of population is irrelevant to the problem of poverty or to economic growth. It is difficult to accept such views as reasonable. The present rate of population increase is high, and, because of the existing size of the population, results in very large additions of population each year. So far as can be estimated, the present rate of economic growth is little more than adequate to maintain this increasing population at the present low levels of living.2 If the increase continues it may become a direct obstacle to economic development, and thus bring about a decline in the level of living. Most observers have concluded, therefore, that a national policy is required to control and limit the increase of population. This is the view taken by the Government Planning Commission itself. The problems arise in considering how the objectives are to be attained. Public aid to emigration would be one way of slowing down the increase; but to be effective in the case of India emigration would have to be on a vast scale (about 6 million a year) and it is impossible to conceive of such large numbers being absorbed by the rest of the world. There remains only the limitation of births. How is this to be encouraged and made practically possible? There are some favourable influences. First, the Hindu
1On these points see S.Chandrasekhar, op. cit.
2See the report by experts of the Ford Foundation, published on May 15, 1959. It is there estimated that the population of India will have reached 480 millions by 1965 while agricultural production will only be enough to feed at a reasonable level about 360 millions.
religion is not opposed to birth control, and there seems to be little opposition in the general mores of Indian society. Secondly, the development of industry and of urban life is likely, in the long run, to engender the same desires to limit family size as were produced in Western societies under similar influences. The difficulty is that family limitation is necessary now, so that industrial development can continue unchecked. The unfavourable factors are poverty and ignorance. Family limitation is most urgently required in the villages, where 85% of India’s population lives. But these villages lack many other things which have as high a priority as birth control clinics (and in the view of the inhabitants themselves would appear as being more directly beneficial), while ignorance and suspicion make difficult the dissemination of knowledge about birth control methods. It should be added that traditional sentiments in favour of large families are still very strong.
The distribution of India’s population is very unlike that of an advanced industrial society. Five-sixths of the population live in the 550,000 villages of India, and a large proportion of the other sixth lives in small towns. In 1951, there were only 76 towns with more than 100,000 inhabitants, and only 5 (Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, Hyderabad, and Old and New Delhi together) with populations exceeding one million. Many of the problems of India are, therefore, those of a rural, agricultural society; they are made more complicated by the fact that the society is embarking upon industrialization and urbanization. The growth of cities has been continuous at least since 1881 (when census figures became available); the urban population1 was 9·3% of the total in 1881 and 12·8% in 1941, and the number of large towns (100,000 and over) exactly doubled in twenty years, from 38 in 1931 to 76 in 1951. It is only in the last twenty years, and especially since 1947, that urbanization has proceeded rapidly.
Thus urban life, and the values and problems of urban life, do not yet dominate the life of society, although their effect is growing. Migration to the towns, and the improvement of means of communication, both have an important influence upon village organization and upon the caste system. A recent study by S.C.Dube2 shows the influence of Hyderabad upon the political structure, caste relations, and general values, in a village within its orbit. Another study, by F.G.Bailey,3 of a village in the Orissa hills more remote from
1Following the census definition of ‘urban’ which includes places of 5,000 or more inhabitants.
2S.C.Dube, Indian Village (London 1955).
3F.G.Bailey, Caste and the Economic Frontier, (Manchester 1957).
an urban centre, shows how even there the influence of the wider economic system leads to a growth of commerce, and the development of national administration to the breakdown of political isolation, with important effects upon village organization. As yet there has been little systematic study of what happens in the towns themselves. Some of the more obvious indices have, of course, been established. Thus, it is known that the sex ratio is abnormal in the towns, and more abnormal the larger the towns; for every 100 women there are 123 men in urban areas generally, while in the largest towns (over 500,000 inhabitants) there are 162 men for every 100 women. This is characteristic of a transitional stage of urbanization, in which it is chiefly young unmarried men who go to work in the towns, while those who are married leave their wives behind in the village.1 Some religious groups are more urban than others; Parsis and Jews are almost entirely urban, Christians predominantly so, and Muslims slightly more urban than Hindus.2 As would be expected, the urban population is much more literate.
There is as yet little information about the effects of urban life upon the character of social relationships or upon beliefs and attitudes; nothing, for example, about religion in urban areas, and very little about caste membership and observance of caste rules. But three recent urban surveys, A.Bopegamage, Delhi: A Study in Urban Sociology (Bombay 1957), P.N.Prabhu, ‘A study on the social effects of urbanization on industrial workers migrating from rural areas to the city of Bombay’3 and K.N.Venkatarayappa, Bangalore: A Socio-Ecological Study (Bombay 1957), mark a welcome beginning of such enquiries.4 Dr Bopegamage, in a detailed study of two neighbourhoods which forms part of his survey, indicates how caste and socio-economic status may influence each other. He observes that ‘…one significant difference common to both areas
1Compare the studies of the urban population in Africa and elsewhere. A number of such studies are reviewed in Social Implications of Industrialisation and Urbanisation in Africa South of the Sahara (UNESCO, Paris 1956) Part I, ‘Introductory Survey’ (Daryll Forde) and Part II, ‘Survey of recent and currrent field studies’ (Merran McCulloch).
2Kingsley Davis, op. cit., p. 142.
3In The Social Implications of Industrialisation and Urbanisation (UNESCO, Calcutta 1956) pp. 49–106.
4The socio-economic surveys of twenty one Indian towns, sponsored by the Research Programmes Committee of the Planning Commission, are concerned almost exclusively with economic matters. Of those so far published the most interesting is the study of Kanpur, (D.N.Majumdar, Social Contours of an Industrial City, Bombay 1960) which includes a report on a family planning enquiry.
is, individuals of the same economic and educational status have better neighbourly feelings even if they belong to different religions’ (p. 103). In one of the neighbourhoods, which is predominantly Christian, there is much social intercourse between Christians and high caste Hindus, which only stops short of the acceptance of food by the latter, at marriages or in Christian houses. On the other hand, in another district of Delhi, Qarol Bagh, caste differences and prejudices are reinforced by differences in socioeconomic status; prejudice against the Chamars (whose traditional occupation is leather tanning and shoe-making) has increased their group solidarity, and has led them to act vigorously as a caste group in elections (pp. 108–9).
Dr Prabhu’s study reveals how closely the new immigrants to the city remain attached to their villages. Nearly half of the sample studied (523 respondents) visited their village once a year, and almost all would have liked to pay more frequent visits. Those with families send them on visits to the village as often as they can. On the other hand more than half of them wanted their children to grow up in the city because of the superior educational facilities. Thus, as Dr Prabhu points out, the immigrants live between two cultures, urban and rural, and urban values are not yet predominant. But at the same time the circulation between city and village helps the transmission of new ideas, values and modes of behaviour, and in the contact between urban and rural culture the former usually triumphs. (p. 85.) Dr Prabhu examines the effect of city life on the position of women, and on some social attitudes. In the city women have greater freedom of movement and communication, and their husbands accept this as desirable. There are changes in dress and in the valuation of education. Rigid caste rules are not so much observed, and class differences in terms of wealth become more apparent and more strongly felt. Moreover, nearly three-quarters of the migrants declared the caste system to be undesirable, and more than half had no objection to intercaste marriage. The joint-family, on the other hand, was praised by almost all respondents; and it obviously has a continuing function in the city as a system of mutual aid.1
1Cf. the comments of Kizaemon Ariga, ‘Problems of the Asian Family System’ Transactions of the Third World Congress of Sociology (London 1957) Vol. VIII: ‘…generally speaking families in Asia had more members than those in the Western world… This family was the inevitable product of low productivity and the feebleness of social policy on the part of the government in the Asian countries…’ (pp. 235–36).
Urbanization and its effects constitute a vast and important field of study for Indian sociologists. Historical studies have indicated some of the factors which prevented the emergence of an urban middle class of the Western type before the period of British rule,1 and its slow growth during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.2 What is the ideology and the social and political influence of this urban middle class today? What is the character and influence of the urban working class? How do these urban classes affect the caste system, and how are their ideas transmitted to, and received by, the villages? A beginning has been made on the investigation of such problems, but there is a great need for many more detailed and precise enquiries, and for a close collaboration in this field between sociologists and social historians.