ENORMOUS INCREASE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 2, 3 January 1942, Page 8

ENORMOUS INCREASE

POPULATION OF INDIA

RUGBY, January 1

A further enormous increase in the Indian population is recorded in the preliminary results of the census taken in March, 1941. The total was 388,800,000—an increase of 50,681,000, or 15 per cent., since 1931. Between 1921 and 1931 the increase was 10.6 per cent.

Three of the principal cities have almost doubled their population in ten years. Calcutta, which has become the largest city, has risen from 1,141,000 to 2,109,000; Bombay, from 1,161,000 to 1,488,000; and Madras, from 647,000 to 777,000.

Other, cities also show substantial increases, and the population of the North-West Frontier Province has increased by 25 per cent., and Punjab and Bengal by 20 per cent. The percentage of literates shows a striking increase, being more than 12 per cent., compared with under 7 per cent, in 1931.—8.0. W.

A German shell fired across the English Channel one day killed three persons, a soldier and a sailor playing in a football match on the sand, and a casual bystander who had just dismounted from his bicycle to watch them. They were the only casualties in what appeared to be retaliation for R.A.F. raids over France. The teams had just begun to play and the two men were scrambling for the ball when .the shell burst in a field nearby. Dover proper was not disturbed by the shelling, and housewives went about their marketing as usual.