Half a Century of Population Trends in India

IN this paper will be shown two aspects of change in the population of India, region by region, during the last fifty years. The text interprets the folding 1 * cartogram,'' or map utilizing administrative units, on which the statistics have been plotted. So far as possible, the administrative district as constituted in 1931 is taken as the territorial unit. On this folding-map whole numbers give the net percentage change (of increase or decrease) from 1881 to 1931, and numbers to one decimal place the variability per cent. in these changes. The two smaller maps in half-tone are based upon the larger, and show by layer colouring the generalized results. The second half-tone map therefore indicates whether the net change has occurred at a steady rate or whether, on the contrary, it has been reached by decades of alternating or varying increase, decrease, or arrest. For the manner of change is an essential clue to'the relative regional conditions, whether of fair subsistence and of health, or of famine or deficiency and of disease. The idea of determining deviations from any steady rate of regional change, the variability, as I have called it, has been indicated, with examples drawn, for contrast, from western and north-eastern India, in my paper on the population of Bengal (Geddes, 1937). This concept or method may, I hope, he of service to the authorities in reporting upon the census of India in 1941; for I am not aware that it has. hitherto been given this statistical expression with regard to India nor indeed to any other country. Although these statistics were worked out for India by 1935, I preferred to withhold their publication until I should have re-visited the country and travelled as widely as possible, bearing in mind these statistical facts and the questions of inter? pretation they suggested. By help of a grant from the Carnegie Universities Trust, which I wish to acknowledge here, further field study was duly made in India in 1938-39, by land, water, and air. This furnished an admirable opportunity for observations and also brought me personal contacts in all parts of India which continue to be of the greatest possible assistance. After every census the reports confirm that in India the normal human urge to mate and breed, to marry and to found and enlarge a family, reinforced for all the creeds by theif sacred texts, is hardly checked by poverty, short of famine, unless (to a limited extent) by delay in marriage. As a result, whenever natural resources cannot be, or are not developed and increased then, under the existing social and economic system, population always tends to increase beyond the margin of safety. Sooner or later danger materializes, and for a time the death-rate gains on the birth-rate or surpasses it. The birth-rate itself naturally varies somewhat, but to nothing like the degree to which the death-rate differs in different times and tracts. In other words, and making allowances for the association of disease with poverty, in India under existing conditions the Malthusian diagnosis is still broadly correct

Geography · Net migration rate · Physical geography · Population · Population growth · Regional science · Sociology · Demography · Income, Poverty, and Inequality · Insurance, Mortality, Demography, Risk Management

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