COLOSSAL TASK

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23707, 14 January 1939, Page 14

COLOSSAL TASK

TAKING OF INDIAN CENSUS A colossal task awaits officials entrusted with taking the census of India in 1941. . . , The Indian census is the biggest administrative task in the world, scheduling head by head as it does onefifth of the world’s population. This would probably not present such difficulties, since India has had experience of census-taking since 1872, did any permanent machinery exist. As it is, however, the organising officers have to start on each occasion almost from scratch. It takes four years to make the preparations to cover every district with an adequate network, accomplish the enumeration, tabulate the results and thence draw the conclusions which provide invaluable data. Some 2,000,000 enumerators who will be engaged must be educated to their task of inquiry and tabulation. The last census cost India about £337,500. India’s population is likely to prove to be 400,000,000 by 1941. That is* the forecast of the Public Health Commissioner. Since 1931, when the last census was taken. India has remained comparatively free from violent•.epidemics and the annual balance of births over deaths has been consistently favourable to an increase of population. During 1936, says the commissioner, the number of births was nearly 280,000 higher than in 1935. Deaths were about 200,000 fewer, so that the estimated population for 1936 shows an increase of 3,600,000 over the previous vear Between the census of 1931 and June 1936, the actual increase has been 6.1 per cent. T ~ Live births recorded in British India during 1936 totalled nearly 10,000,000, the rate per 1000'being 35.4.-