Family Planning Communication in India: The Actors and the Acts [Hardcover]

This book is the first systematic study on the historiography of the family planning communication process in India. It traces the history of the development of a highly technical health communication process.

Shashwati Goswami's book fills two important lacunae in existing scholarship. First, it provides a long-needed critical evaluation of communication policies undertaken in India's family planning programme from the 1950s to the present. Secondly, and related, she demonstrates the formative influence of the family planning programme on media growth in India more broadly

Arvind Rajagopal, Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, Steinhardt School of Culture,

Education, and Human Development, NYU, USA

Acknowledgements Foreword Introduction 1 Malthusian Heritage and Family Planning in India: A Historiography 2 Development Communication: Theory and Practice 3 Family Planning Communication: The Actors and the Acts 4 Family Planning Communication through the Intersection of Nationalism, Religion, Caste, Class and Gender 5 Conclusion: Is There One? Index

This book is the first systematic study on the historiography of the family planning communication process in India. It traces the history of the development of a highly technical health communication process.

It discusses how the discourse on Indias population problem was at the heart of the development dialogue which was being promoted by the British colonial administration. The book examines the role of the censuses and the Five-Year plans in the development of the discussion on the population explosion in India. Also, it critically discusses the role of the Ford Foundations leadership in institutionalising the communication process in India. The book essentially argues that population control communication enab