British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences

Politics and Society in Contemporary India:
Change and Diversity

Thursday 5 October 5 2006

ABSTRACT

Demographic and related change in India
Tim Dyson, FBA, LSE

India has seen considerable demographic change during recent decades - with major falls in death rates and declines in fertility. Yet despite these developments, the country’s overall rate of population growth has remained fairly constant until quite recently. And differences in the timing of change - especially in relation to fertility - have meant that differences in rates of population growth between the country’s major regions are actually rather greater now than they generally have been in the past. Against this backcloth, and with one eye on the future, this paper will review recent demographic changes in India, examine some of the principal factors that have conditioned them, and discuss some of their main social, economic and political ramifications - which in many ways may be profound. For example, the expansion of the population by some four hundred million during the first 25 years of the present century is likely to pose major challenges for employment provision - especially because most of the expansion will take place in the adult working age range; moreover, the uneven nature of the demographic expansion between different regions may well contribute to pressures on national political structures and help to promote devolutionary processes; and, finally, the fact of fertility decline may underpin changes in gender relations, at least over the longer run.

< return to programme
< go to conference homepage