Spurts in India's population growth during the twentieth century: a spatial view

The years 1921 and 1951 have been unmarked, in the literature on the theme, as the critical divides in India's population growth since the beginning of the present century. The veracity of this observation has been tested for different parts of the country by analysing data for individual districts. While the above generalization did hold good at the all-India level, it was found true for only one-third of the districts at the disaggregated level. The relevance of the demographic transition model to India was also examined. The model did apply, in essence, to the Indian situation but its quantitative parameters as derived fropm the Western experience, were not appropriate.