a project on fertility
transition in South India

  The project
 
  The Team
  Output
 

 

Acknowledgement


 

 

 

South India Fertility Project
a web site devoted to the SIFP


This web site is devoted to the presentation of the South India Fertility Project.

Context

The rapid, but very uneven fertility decline observed in India over the last three decades have left demographers, economists and other social scientists wondering at the exact determinants of this demographic revolution that has now brought fertility in parts of the country, such as in Southern states, to European levels. Economic, social and regional explanations were put forth but have usually failed to offer a global explanatory framework accounting for the variety of fertility transitions across regions and social groups.

Maps of South India: regions, cities, districts and fertility

The project

The South India Fertility Project aimed at offering a fresh perspective on these issues bringing together five research teams working on fertility decline. One of its first objectives was to integrate various research initiatives and devise a common plan of actions to re-examine the social and demographic context of fertility decline in the four states that comprise South India. The first phase of the project was indeed a general synthesis of demographic trends in South Indian regions that form the backbone of the first book to be published by the SIFP members.

The core database

The background of the project was the release of micro-level data by the Census of India that included for the time indirect information on local fertility levels for the 75,000 village units found in South India. It was decided that these detailed would be mapped and a large-scale GIS (geographic information system) was set up for this purpose: this GIS is a spatialized database that combines the original census statistics with the precise geographic co-ordinates of each locality.

It took us almost two years to complete this village-level GIS which is still today the only one of its kind in India. The GIS format also means that further geographic information (such as elevation, rivers, road networks, etc.) could be gradually added up as new "layers" to our map of South India. The GIS database allows therefore examining not only fine fertility differentials across regions or subregions, but also the association with other factors that may be social or economic (agriculture, social composition, literacy, irrigation, etc.), local (health infrastructure, school, communication facilities, etc.) or strictly spatial (proximity to cities or roads, etc.).

Objectives

What the project has stressed all along is the formidable spatial patterning of fertility in South India that remains visible on various scales. We first showed that fertility decline followed certain geographic contours in India from 1951 to 2001 by producing two new sets of estimates. Then, we further demonstrated that the spatial patterning of fertility was also very pronounced within South India and each state. For instance, fertility was extremely low in rural areas of the Coimbatore region, a feature that was missed by previous analyses of demographic transition in India. Fertility decline started in this area probably as early as in neighbouring Kerala in spite of the absence of any spectacular social development, be it in terms of education or health improvements. Our analysis suggests that fertility decline might have been initiated by some local "pioneer" groups, usually dominant castes of each subregion, and that their behaviour gradually diffused "vertically" across other groups in the region and "horizontally" towards neighbouring subregions.

The second phase

The project's second phase whose fieldwork operations completed in 2003 endeavoured to examine the local perception of demographic behaviour of various groups (from "pioneers" to "laggards") in various rural settings. We selected ten villages across South India for this purpose where we carried out intensive investigations in 2003 in order to examine the local conditions of change in fertility attitudes and perceptions. A new book is envisioned based on the findings of these village surveys.

Project extensions

An important offshoot of the project was our capacity to disseminate data and maps. We designed a special mapping software to access the data for the Tamil Nadu state (published as a CD-ROM under the name of SIPIS) that proved very popular. More recently, an electronic web atlas has also been released that allows users to consult a set of fifteen social and economic maps available for each State along with comments prepared by specialists.

A further offshoot of the GIS was the extension of our activities towards themes that were not in our original remit. For instance, the pronounced geographic clustering of girl deficit has been the topic of a PhD research on the social and spatial diffusion of infanticide and foeticide in areas of Tamil Nadu state. Other topics investigated included the distribution of irrigation facilities, the population-environment dynamics, the impact of cities on village modernization, health infrastructures in Andhra Pradesh and even the pilgrimage routes in South India. These examples illustrate the multifarious applications of the GIS database.

For the future

Once complemented with the micro-level data from the last Census (not yet available in 2003), the GIS dataset is likely to be used by team members for further studies to examine the impact of ten years of liberalization on the social and economic fabric of South India. Themes likely to be investigated include the ongoing fertility decline, the spectacular progress of literacy, the geography of changes in communication infrastructures, etc.

We welcome all propositions from interested students and scholars for further extension of our research projects (contact CZ Guilmoto at )

Varia links

see the SIFP mentionned in an editorial page of the Financial Express

SIFP described in the French Institute website

SIFP briefly described also en fraais in the LPED website

 

Top