Census India 1931: The Population Problem in Baroda

Select Language Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bulgarian Bengali Catalan Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Georgian German Greek Gujarati Haitian Creole Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Khmer Korean Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Marathi Nepali Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Tamil Telugu Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish

This article is an extract from CENSUS OF INDIA, 1931 Report by J. H. HUTTON, C.I.E., D.Sc., F.A.S.B., Corresponding Member of the Anthropologische Gesselschaft of Vienna. Delhi: Manager of Publications 1933 (Hutton was the Census Commissioner for India) Indpaedia is an archive. It neither agrees nor disagrees with the contents of this article. Secondly, this has been scanned from a book. You can help by sending the corrected version/ additional information to the Facebook community, Indpaedia.com. All information used will be duly acknowledged.

The Population Problem in Baroda

Baroda State occupies 8,164 sq. miles in Gujarat and Kathiawar, but is not a compact whole, consisting, as it does, of four major and several minor disconnected areas, with a total population of 2,443,007 and a mean density of 299 per sq. mile. The population has increased by 14 .9% since 1921. The natural increase is estimated at 9. 4%, and the increase due to immigration was swollen by 26,755 persons who migrated from villages in adjoining British territory for political motives connected with the Non-co-operation movement. About the size of Wurttemberg both in area and in population, Baroda is the sixth largest of the Indian States though about sixteenth in area.

No epidemics visited the State during the decade, nor were there any calamities claiming a serious toll of lives, but the State suffered severely from floods, frost, locusts and poor seasons and at the end of the decade from the heavy fall in prices. Nevertheless co-operative societies rose in number from 509 in 1921 to 1,047 in 1931, their membership from 16,932 to 37,321 and their capital from 26 to 75 lakhs of rupees.

Occupied area increased from 3,780,000 acres to 3,920,000 and the number of permanent irrigation wells increased from 60,433 to 63,775. Medical relief continued to be expanded and child welfare and anti-malarial measures to occupy the State Sanitation Department.