662 REPORT—1904. 
rc 
5. Lhe Kelation between Population and Area in India. 
By J. A. Barnus, CLS. 
The term ‘ density’ may be applied to population in a sense merely numerical, 
or it may be taken to involve the economical consideration of relation to the means 
of subsistence. Used in the latter sense, with reference to a population producing 
the food it consumes, the determining factor is practically the fertility of the local 
resources, India comes under this head. Its population is mainly vegetarian, 
and the greatly predominating occupation is agriculture. In analysing the distri- 
bution of its population, therefore, the first consideration is the relative fertility 
of the various tracts, and, using the geographical divisions of the country as the 
base and remembering that tropical conditions prevail, the essential feature to be 
taken into account is the rainfall. Speaking generally, the concentration of popu- 
lation tends to vary directly as the rainfall, and inversely as its seasonal variability. 
There are several important instances in which this tendency is not apparent, but 
here it is kept in abeyance by special circumstances, such as unhealthy climate, 
political disturbances, or paucity of cultivable land on the one hand, and on the 
other by exceptivnal facilities for supplementing the rainfall by artificial irri- 
ration, 
i There are few countries of any considerable size so uniform in the distribution 
of their population that the figure of their average density serves any purpose 
but that of the very broadest comparison, and its chief use in statistics is as a 
screen on which to illustrate its component variations. In India, with its unusual 
range of climatic and geographical variety, the average is peculiarly meaningless, 
and, compounded as it is largely from its two extremes, the density it implies 
actually prevails over but a comparatively small proportion of the area which 
contributes to it. The urban element in the population, again, enters but to a 
trifling extent into the calculation, as is only to be expected in a country so 
markedly agricultural in its pursuits and so largely self-supporting. As a rule, 
the most densely peopled tracts, except just round the large industrial seaports, 
are remarkable for the paucity of their urban aggregates beyond the size of the 
ordinary local market town. There are, on the other hand, parts of the country, 
especially in Native States, where a comparatively large town is found in the 
midst of a very thinly populated neighbourhood, to which it serves as a centre of 
commerce. The political and military considerations which used to determine 
the situation and prospects of an important town are now superseded almost 
everywhere by those connected with transport and manufacture. Except, how- 
ever, along the coast and trunk lines of railway, the smaller urban centres prosper 
and wane with the fortunes of the surrounding peasantry. 
The nature and extent of the shifting of the distribution of population of late 
years are subjects upon which the recent famines have made it difficult to reach 
satisfactory conclusions, nor were the exceptionally favourable circumstances of 
the preceding decennial period much more instructive. At best the rate of growth 
in the long-settled tracts does not appear to be other than moderate compared 
with that prevailing elsewhere, but the evidence of a state approaching congestion 
is not altogether convincing. Between 1881 and 1891 the most thickly peopled 
tracts showed a rate of increase very much below that of those with a more 
scattered population ; but it is not improbable that in the latter the later census 
was far more accurately taken, so that much of the growth must be discounted 
accordingly. On the other hand, during the last decennium, the denser tracts 
showed, on the whole, a higher rate than the rest; but here, again, allowance must 
be made for the fortunate immunity from famine enjoyed by the former, as also 
for a certain multiplication of the means of subsistence which has characterised 
some of them. 
On the whole, it appears certain that under present conditions any increase in 
population that occurs will fall directly upon the land, and in most parts of the 
country the means exist for meeting that pressure, at all events for some consider- 
able time. Cultivable land not yet taken up is found in most provinces and 
States. In some comparatively remote regions this area is large and continuous, 
