Density. Over the whole of India the popu- the docks and jute mills of Calcutta, the minera is lation per square mile averages 177, the mean of Bengal and Chota Nagpur, the cotton of Bom

density in the British Provinces being 226 and in the States 101. If the districts (and small States) are taken as a unit, and the cities are excluded, the mean density ranges between a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 1,882 per square mile. The unequal distribution of the population of India is due to causes analysed in previous editions of the Year Book; it is chiefly dictated by physical conditions. Other influences are at work, such as the state of law and order, the means of communication, climate, and the existence of irrigation. Industrial factors are becoming more and more important as the population moves out of the congested rural tracts to supply the labour needed for industrial enterprise for the tea in Assam,

bay and the coffee and rubber of Southern India. For the purposes of comparison the manner in which the population is distributed in other countries of the world is indicated in the following statement:

MOVEMENT OF THE

The population of India has increased by 1.2 per cent, during the decade. The figures of previous censuses with the variations per cent. are given below. The average increase since the census of 1872 falls at a rate of 5.5 per cent., but the real gain is considerably less than this figure owing to two factors, (a) the additions of area and population included at each census and (6)the progressive increase in the accuracy of the enumeration from census to census. So far as the present census is concerned the additional area and population included amount to 2,675 square miles and 86,533 persons, respectively, while for the present purpose it may be taken that the enumeration of 1921 was, as regards numbers, as accurate but not more accurate than that of 1911. The real increase in the population during the last 49 years is thus estimated at about fifty-four millions or 20.1 per-cent.

Factors in the Movement. The increase was slightly greater in the British districts (13) than in the States (1.0). Assam and Burma show comparatively high rates of increase; immigration is an important factor in the rise in Assam, but neither of these Provinces was exposed to the invasion of influenza which wiped off the whole of the natural increase in the Central Provinces and Berar, Bihar and Orissa, and Bombay, and substantially reduced the population in the United Provinces and Raj putana, the Central India Agency, and Hydera bad State. The stimulus given to agricultural prosperity in the Punjab by a large expansion of canal irrigation did much to neutralise the effects of the high death rate in 1918. In Bengal and Madras unhealthy conditions were more localised and the development of the population was only partially retarded.

The War. The war itself had little direct effect on the population of India. Such effect could operate in three ways (1) by death casualties, (2) by increasing the number of persons outside India at the census, and (3) by decreasing the birth-rate. The actual number of death casualties among the officers and ranks of Indian Army units and labour corps was 58,238. The maximum number serving out of India in combatant and labour units at any one time between 1914 and 1919 was, approximately, Indian troops 250,000, labour corps 230,000, total 480,000; the number about the time of the census being troops 105,000, labour corps 20,800, total 125,800. So far as the larger totals are concerned the war is not a direct factor of any importance in the census in any province.

Economic Conditions. In considering the economic factors which determined the movement of the population during the decade it can be divided into two periods, a fairly normal period from 1911 to 1917 and the disastrous epidemic year 1918, accompanied by scarcity and followed by a second crop failure in 1920. In 1917 conditions in India began to respond to the world conditions of the war, men for the fighting and labour units and food, munitions and war material of all kinds were demanded. The strain on the railway organisation dislocated the local markets and the distribution system of the country was impaired. The rising prices of imported necessities hit the poorer classes. Then followed the disastrous seasons of 1918 and 1919. Famine relief organisation is now so highly perfected in India that scarcity is not necessarily accompanied by high mortality but induenza, starting in 1918, visited almost every portion of the country and in a few months wiped out the natural increase in the population of the previous seven years.

Public Health. -The distinctive feature of the decade 1901-1911 was plague. The recorded number of deaths from plague in the ten years was 61 millions. In the recent decade the deaths were less than half that number. Cholera is normally most prevalent in the Eastern Provinces.

Virulent as the epidemic can still be when its hold is established it is now usually of a temporary and local nature, and the total deathrate in British India from the disease during the decade did not amount to more than 1.5 per cent. By far the largest number of deaths

common in most parts of the country, specially in the northern provinces and in the Central Provinces and Berarand Bombay, but the extent of the mortality which can be ascribed to it cantot at present be estimated. Nor can figures, be given of phthisis whichis undoubtedly responsible for considerable mortality; especially in the towns of western India, the deaths from this disease in Ahmedabad amounting in 1918 to 5 per mille of the population. All other factors in the health of the people have been overshadowed by the influenza epidemic of 1918 and 1919 which has dominated the popu lation figures at the 1921 census.

Influenza:-The influenza epidemic of 1918 invaded India in two distinct waves. The first infection apparently radiated from Bombay, but it is impossible to say where the more vir nlent virus of the second invasion came from.

The rural areas were most severely infected, the reason probably being that while villages

was

have little advantage over towns in the matter of overcrowding, sanitation and ventilation the urban areas have the benefit of qualified medical aid and organised effort. Mortality specially high among adults (20-40), parti cularly among adult females, the disease being generally fatal to women in pregnancy. At the worst period whole villages were absolutely laid desolate by the disease. There was some times no means of disposing of the dead, crops

have been made based on the excess mortality over some suitable mean. The average of these calculations gives a total number of deaths in the areas under registration of about 7,100,000 in 1918, to which must be added, as the results of similar calculation, another 14 million deaths in 1919, giving a total recorded mortality of nearly 8 millions in the two years. Even this, however, must be a substantial under estimate since, owing to the complete breakdown of the reporting staff, the registration of vital statistics was in many cases suspended during the progress of the epidemic in 1918.

The total influenza mortality for India is put at between 12 and 13 millions. This is a conservative estimate. Even this estimate makes the influenza mortality, a large part of which occurred in three or four months, exceed by nearly two millions the total estimated deaths from plague in twenty years. On an estimated case mortality of ten per cent the total number of persons affected was 125 millions or two-fifths of the population of India. There was a further reaction on the birth rate.

Houses and

a

Families.--The average number of persons per house has not changed in the last decade, though there was decline between 1881 and 1911. The trend of the figures varies in different provinces, but they do not afford substantial ground for any material inference. It would, for example, be expected that the incidence of the influenza mortality would fall fairly evenly upon the individual households and would therefore cause a reduction in the number of persons per house. It does not appear to have done so either in Bombay, the United Provinces, the Central Provinces, or Rajputana, while in Bengal, where there is a rise in the population, there is a fall in the size of the household. The figures are unsatisfactory, and though they invite a discussion on the condition of the joint family it is doubtful if they can really be held to illuminate it. The general opinion of the Provincial Superintendents is that they do not do

so and that other indications do not show that

the joint family system has yet undergone any radical change, at any rate in the agricultural tracts of the country.

were left unharvested and all local official action
was largely paralysed, owing to the fact that the
majority of the official staff were put out of
action by the epidemic. To add to the distress
the disease came at a period of widespread crop
failure and reached its climax in November
when the cold weather had set in; and, as the
price of cloth happened at the time to be at its
highest, many were unable to provide themselves
with the warm clothing that was essential in
the case of an illness that so readily attacked the 1921
lungs. The disease lasted in most provinces
well into 1919 and gave a high mortality in that
year in Bengal and the United Provinces.
Even after it had subsided there were in the
Central Provinces, Bombay and Burma mild
recrudescences later in the year, while local
outbreaks continued over the country during
the next two years.

1911

1901

1891

1881

There is no direct means of ascertaining the mortality from the epidemic. Various estimates

population. grants. grants. population. population.

NOTES.

(1) The figures for the Provinces are inclusive of the States attached to them except in the case of Madras where they exclude

NOTE. The difference in areas is due to the use of revised survey figures and to corrections for fluvial action; in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, the Punjab and the United Provinces it is also due to inter provincial transfers.

TOWN AND COUNTRY.

The progress of urbanisation in India-if | between 5,000 and 50,000, whereas the роthere has been any progress at all-has been pulation of towns between 10 to 20 thousand very slow during the past thirty years, the did not keep abreast of the progress of the