Census India 1931: The Population Problem in Hyderabad
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 |
The Population Problem in Hyderabad
His Exalted Highness the Nizam's Dominions, though a little less than Hyderabad. Jammu and Kashmir in size, constitute by far the largest of the States in population, containing 14,436,148 persons with a mean density of 175 in an area of 82,698 sq. miles. North of the Godavari and its principal tributary the Manjra the country is rich and highly cultivated, principally in cotton and wheat, while in the south and east the country is more rugged and less fertile, the most valuable crop, at any rate in the east, being rice. The decade was on the whole a good one agriculturally.
It opened, it is true, with famine but except for that first year the harvests were either good or moderate and the land under cultivation increased from 38 to 42 million acres. Co-operative Societies increased from 1,437 to 2,157 and their membership from 35,293 to 53,120 and their working capital from eightysix and a half lakhs to nearly two crores of rupees. Cotton prices fell in 1926, but otherwise the agriculturist benefited by well maintained prices for most of his produce until 1930. The results are seen in the increase in natural population by 14.9%, though part of this may have been due to improved enumeration. In the last 50 years the population of the Marathwara division, the western part of the State, has increased by 28.0% while that of the Telingana, the eastern part, has increased by 69.4%.
The north- western part of the State is Maratha by language and population, the south-western is Kanarese and these two areas compose the Marathwara ; the eastern part of the State (Telingana) is Telugu by language and population ; both are predominantly Hindu by religion.