MOHAN RACT The Writing on the Wall Structural Adjustment Programme and the World Development Report 1993—Implications for Family Planning in India This paper, exploratory in nature, is divided into three sections. The first traces the evolution and growth of the family planning programme in India and the lessons we have perhaps to learn. These point to the critical importance of the following factors which are deemed to determine the success of the programme: 1) Poverty alleviation through employment generation; 2) Improvements in health, nutrition, h^ant and child survival; 3) The spread of literacy in general arid female literacy in particular. The second section reviews selected literature on the impact of structural adjustment programmes on some of these variables in countries of Latin America and Africa. The third section studies available empirical evidence on these variables in India, and, based on the experience of countries whose economies have been structurally adjusted, offers tentative hypotheses on the likely impact of the structural adjustment programme and the measures suggested in the Vforld Development Report on the family planning programme in India. II As India rushed to her tryst with destiny, the National Planning Committee chaired by Jawaharlal Nehru appointed a sub-committee to examine the population question. Under the chairmanship of Dr. Radhakamal Mukherji, Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Social Scientist, Vol. 22, Nos. 9-12, September-December 1994