Abstract
Control of population–control both of the numbers of people and of their actions–is vital to modern development. Demography, with its disciplinary interest in population data collection and commitment to population control, legitimizes and reinforces development discourse with the “facticity” of its numbers. Women are at the center of these efforts. We analyze the Demographic and Health Survey (part of a group of surveys that can be considered at the center of demographic knowledge of non-industrialized countries) in order to examine the discourse of population control in India and other Third World countries. In India, population control and management has long been the goal of governing powers, colonial and Indian; the DHS is only the most recent intervention in this population management project. We deconstruct the DHS and examine the historical and epistemological background of that survey project to demonstrate and illuminate the connection between demography and development. We argue that questionnaire methodology and its related epistemology are connected to a particular developmentalist ideology and practice, one that relies on neoliberal ideology with its rhetoric of individual choice and free market that works to manage and control women’s bodies and lives in the name of necessary demographic change.
357. What is the main reason you are not using a method of contraception to delay or avoid pregnancy?
358. Do you think you will use a method to delay or avoid pregnancy within the next 12 months?
359. Do you think you will use a method to delay or avoid pregnancy at any time in the future?
360. Which method would you prefer to use?
(DHS/India Questionnaire (Round 2), Questions 357–360)
We wish to thank those who spoke with us in India and the United States about the DHS (see footnotes below) and who generously provided insights and information about the survey. Our findings and, especially, our interpretations are our own; by citing information from these interviews, we do not mean to suggest that the interviewees would agree with our interpretations or perspectives. We thank Jan Brunson, Deb DeGraff, and Sara Dickey for their readings and helpful comments.
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Notes
- 1.
As we discuss below, in India, the DHS project has been renamed the National Family Health Survey; we will refer to this survey project as DHS/India throughout the paper.
- 2.
While the term neoliberal has many meanings, here we refer to “technical reliance on market mechanisms” (Ferguson 2009: 173) and, particularly, “a sort of ‘rationality’ in the Foucauldian sense, linked less to economic dogmas or class projects than to specific mechanism of government, and recognizable modes of creating subjects” (Ferguson 2009: 171).
- 3.
The second DHS/India, in 1998–1999, received additional funding from UNICEF for nutrition data collection.
- 4.
Interview with K. Srinivasan, Executive Director, Population Foundation of India Dec 2000, Delhi.
- 5.
Interview with K. Srinivasan, Executive Director, Population Foundation of India Dec 2000, Delhi.
- 6.
Interview with Fred Arnold, Vice President, ORC Macro, March 2001, Calverton, MD.
- 7.
Interviews with: Fred Arnold, Vice President, ORC Macro, March 2001, Calverton, MD; and Arun Kumar Roy, Chief Executive of Economic Information Technology, Kolkata, Jan 2001.
- 8.
Each round of DHS had a different (but similar) questionnaire. In this analysis, we draw from the questionnaires used in both Round 2 and Round 3 of the survey.
- 9.
The village questionnaires were used to collect information from the village head about facilities in the village such as health and education facilities, the presence of electricity and telephone connections, and asked about major problems in the village. The household questionnaires collected information on all residents in the household at the time of the survey, about deaths in the household over the past 2 years, and also asked about such issues as the prevalence of certain illnesses (such as asthma and tuberculosis), ownership of items such as land, livestock or house; and details of housing such as source of drinking water, type of toilet facility, and where household members go for medical treatment.
- 10.
It is also not clear how such a close calibration of women’s responses on how long they would have waited would be helpful to survey researchers. Here is an example where getting “exact” information seems more important than its use would argue for.
- 11.
Interview with K.V. Rao, Chief Director, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Dec 2000, Delhi.
- 12.
For example, Q439 (Round 2), which asks about the timing of renewal of sexual intercourse after birth, appears to be linked to the theories that suggest that post-partum abstinence can delay pregnancy and reduce fertility rates.
- 13.
See Horn (1994) for a fascinating analysis of a Fascist state’s use of social science in governing the Italian population in the 1920s and 1930s; Horn’s work demonstrates how “in the name of social defense and the promotion of the population, previously private behaviors were made targets of a permanent governmental management” (Horn 1994: 24).
- 14.
- 15.
Satish Agnihotri (UNICEF consultant), in a discussion at a Seminar at Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta January 2001.
- 16.
See Johnson-Hanks (2007) on how the instability and difficult predictive ability of fertility intentions—which have been shown to be time and context dependent— mean that questions like those found on the DHS questionnaire lead to inaccurate and even misleading data.
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Chatterjee, N., Riley, N.E. (2018). Women, Biopower and the Making of Demographic Knowledge: India’s Demographic and Health Survey. In: Riley, N., Brunson, J. (eds) International Handbook on Gender and Demographic Processes. International Handbooks of Population, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1290-1_3
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