Governmentality, population and reproductive family in modern India

In the 20th century and now into the 21st, 'overpopulation' presides over its own industry of institutions, discourses and practices which in turn produce the terrain on which questions regarding the nature and import of reproduction in India can both be asked and answered. Rather than viewing population control as a mechanism of regulation/repression, this article is about what population control discourse produces: the erasure of the very possibility of thinking historically about population control in India. It presents a preliminary history of population as an object of knowledge in modern India, highlights the smooth ahistoricity of overpopulation discourse and addresses the history of the relationship between population and governance as it has interpolated the reproductive family.