While concern about the size of India's population has been shown by the intelligential right from the beginning of the present century, active interest in the study of population became pronounced only with the launching of planning for economic and social development after independence. The First Five Year Plan, 1951-56 duly recognized population as an important parameter requiring careful consideration in the planning of development effort and emphasized the need for undertaking population research oriented to developmental policies and programmes. This was followed up during the Second Five Year Plan by the establishment of several demographic research centres under the then Ministry of Health and Family Planning (now the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare) and a Demographic Training & Research Centre (now known as International Institute for Population Sciences) at Bombay under the joint sponsorship of the United Nations, Government of India, and Sir Dorabji Tata Trust. Since then population matters have received increasing attention of scholars from both social and bio-medical sciences and the number of those specializing in population research and studies has steadily increased.

The First Five Year Plan, 1951-56 duly recognized population as an important parameter requiring careful consideration in the planning of development effort and emphasized the need for undertaking population research oriented to developmental policies and programmes.