Population vs the 'invisible hand' (1978)
A brilliant essay by Mamdani suggests why the Indian village with sharp class and caste distinctions the only hope of the poor or moderately poor peasant for rising in the world is to have about four sons who can enable him to expand his holdings, with perhaps one or two going to the city to send back remittances, and so on. It is hard to have four sons without also having four daughters on the average, and this leads to a great population expansion catastrophic for the society. .. We have here almost a classic example of the failure of the "invisible hand," that is, a situation in which the rational private interest is directly opposite to what is necessary for the long-run public good.
Ecodynamics: A New Theory of Societal Evolution, Sage, 1978, pp. 300.