This paper attempts to show that the birth rate in Kerala appears to have started on a course of rapid decline; that the decline began before the intensification of the family planning programme; and that the impact of this fall has already begun to be felt in the growth rate of primary school enrolment. If this analysis correctly portrays the recent trends in the fertility rate in Kerala, and if these trends continue, it would have far-reaching implications for the population policy of underdeveloped areas like Kerala with low levels of per capita income, industrialisation and urbanisation, but high levels of literacy and education. The analysis is divided into two parts. In the first part, the author attempts to show, on the basis of available evidence from Census and Sample Registration results, that the crude birth rate in Kerala had declined by 1971 to the lowest level among all the states in India and that the rate had been declining continuously in the latter years of the sixties. In the second part, it is hypothesised that the fall in the birth rate started in the early sixties; that is, ahead of the intensification of the family planning programmes, indicating that some kind of broad societal adjustment had taken place prior to the favourable, broad-based response to family planning measure observed more recently in the state. The fall in the birth rate in the early sixties could have been the consequence of the decline in infant and child mortality rates during the latter fifties, following the extension of primary health centres and other public health measures over a period of time. It is also seen, on the basis of available data and 'guesstimates' with respect to the pattern of changes that might have taken place in birth, death and infant mortality rates during the period from 1951 onwards, that such demographic evidence as there is for this period is not inconsistent with the trends actually observed in enrolment to the first year of primary schooling.