REFLECTIONS ON DEVELOPMENT 79 recognizing the unsatisfactory performance of the small scale enterprises in India; suggests alternative policies towards such enterprises, witliout trying to put forward any plausible hypothesis for the slow growth of this sector. The essay by J N Sinha reviews the principles of wage policy followed in India and their implications for industrial relations. In the process, phrases like "social justice15 and "economic efficiency" are thrown around rather carelessly while describing the ultimate motive of a rational wage structure. G H Hanumantha Rao, in a previously published essay called "Factor Endowments, Technology and Farm Employment", points out the need for region-wise specific policies^ He pleads for increased public investment in irrigation in labour surplus regions which would increase cropping intensity and hence labour absorption, and points out the limited role of yield-raising technological change—which invariably has a labour-saving bias— in such cases. Faulty Causation There is a set of four essays put under one section titled "The Demographic Dimension". In the first of these, the authors argue that expenditures on schooling and health, which make possible increase in "life span", are in the nature of investments and hence a fall in mortality may in fact lead to an increase in the rate of "human capital" formation. This kind of demographic determinism (the causation runs from population growth to economic development without qualifications) is as crude as looking upon the "quality" of labour input as yet another "factor of production". The piece by Asok Mitra is a good expose of the ideology of population control pedalled by advanced capitalist countries in their own interests which also square with those of the ruling elite of the countries who receive "aid" for financing their population control policies. But, from here, he goes on to present a catalogue of policies that should be followed in improving the "quality" of the population, besides checking its rate of growth, though he realizes the political obstacles to the pursuance of such "desirable" policies. The other two essays in this section are again narrower in focus: one is an analysis of Census figures for the period 1901-1971 at the district level, and thus tries to bring out the inter-district variations in population growth and their effect on trends in the district-wise distribution of the total population; the other one is a review of urban policy in India since independence, and brings out the utter failure of it in all its aspects.