Tribal Demography of Gonds

While Demography itself is a new discipline, Tribal Demography can hardly be assessed to have crossed its infancy. In an era of planned development, the significance of Tribal Demography can not be ignored. An urgent need was felt for an empirical and fieldwork based demographic study of a tribal population. This book is a product of an intensive micro level study of Gonds of Madhya Pradesh, one of the largest tribal populations in India. The area investigated is economically backward and the people are illiterate and poverty-stricken. The authors point out that the Gond population, under study, show characteristics typical of the first stage of demographic transition-a high birth rate matching a high death rate. The factors leading to high death rate are poor diet, malnutrition, inadequate medical facilities to curb infant mortality, poor sanitation and unhygienic conditions. The study establishes that a society such as Gonds where paternity is glorified and a woman with a number of children is held in high esteem, the cultural factors contribute significantly to a large-family norm. except for marriage migration, there is no territorial movement for the Gonds-another characteristic feature of population in the first stage of demographic transition. It is stressed in this book that with slow economic changes, direct or indirect, only a fall in mortality is expected. The book contains specific chapters on Theories of Population Growth: Composition of Gond Population and Demographic Processes of Fertility, Mortality and Migration. This book is a welcome addition to the enchanting field of Anthropology, Sociology, tribal Demography and allied disciplines, especially for the students of social Demography.