Gandhi made two observations (Margaret, 1969):

1. The burden of large families falls on the middle class; as far as fertility is concerned, it is greater among the middle than the lower classes. If that were not true, one would not have a low average of five children per family in India .

2. Women do not want many children but they cannot resist their husbands. If they could do so without causing bitterness, birth control would be possible in 99 per cent of the cases.

Gandhi was the first person in India to make an observation on the correlation between family size and class. Later, empirical data collected through research studies confirmed the theoretical validity of his observations. In the pre-transitional stage too, fertility in India was certainly nowhere near the biological maxima (Bongaarts, 1975). Culture must have been a major fertility depressing factor in India . Research has also shown than in India development and modernization caused a rise in fertility in the early years of the post-Independence period (Srinivasan, 1986).

In observation (a) above, the term middle class requires some clarification. In the Gandhian framework, middle class is not an income category. It is a class of people who have begun to westernize their life style and serve as go-betweens. They are most influenced by Westernization and they controlled the consciousness of masses. Behavioural changes among the members of this class have ensued as a result of both modernization and Westernization. Modernization may lead to a short term increase in fertility through its effects on coitus frequency, separation between spouses caused by cultural and familial reasons and intrauterine deaths. In the West, this rise was arrested by a simultaneous change in social mobility aspirations which motivated couples to control family size. This fertility-depressing effect of modernization did not operate among the middles classes during the early phases of development.