IT was once thought that fertility below a level could not be achieved without changes in the material conditions of the people.

Breast-feeding is the most important form of infant nutrition. Unfortunately there has been a steady decline in breast-feeding practices in the post industrialized era. Breast milk substitutes, a major threat to breast-feeding, are indeed a big business.

In this report, we propose new measures of wanted and unwanted fertility based on actual and wanted parity progression ratios, and we apply these procedures to NFHS data for eight states in India.

In the absence of a basic questioning of women's status and role in society, birth control, abortions-and even maternal health care end up merely replacing an old set of traditions with new ones.