THAILAND- A Report from the Northeast

and standard of living of the whole people, and, particularly the rise in the social status of women, giving them the consciousness to act in such a way as to reduce their own sufferings through repeated child-births as well as the opportunities for working outside the family. Kamath remarked that it was absurd to single out the acceptance of the small-family norm as the only factor in this many-faceted development process for immediate and 'drastic' implementation, Kumud Pore reminded the audience that increased population growth had been in fact one of the causes of the rapid economic progress of Europe and North America in the last 200 years. Against the familiar cry that the population of third-world countries is increasing at a 'phenomenal' rate, she pointed out that in the last 200 years, the population of the European countries has increased by over 500 per cent, while that of Asia by only 21 times.