Unit II Article 1. Sumit Guha DSE ..pptx

This is Unit 2 of DSE Economic History of India, subject of sem 3 in DU.

1. Mortality Decline in Early Twentieth Century India: A Preliminary Enquiry Sumit Guha

2. The Four phases of population growth of India. Phase I (1901-1921): This period is called Period of Stagnant Population. High birth and death rate: distribution system of food, medical and other basic necessities were poor and inefficient, literacy rate was high, people die due to epidemic like influenza, plague, smallpox, shortage of food etc. Phase II (1921-1951): This period is referred to as the period of steady population growth. High Birth rate and low death rate. Phase III (1951-1981): referred to as the period of population explosion in India. High Birth arte and death rate fall rapidly Phase IV (1981-2011): referred to as the Period of High Growth with definite signs of slowing down. Low birth rate and low death rate

3. The ’modern rise of population’’ is one of the more remarkable phenomena of demographic history , and has attracted considerable scholarly attention in recent decades. The census data : 1872-1921 : Slow growth with considerable fluctuation, 0.16% per annum 1921-1981: fairly steady and rapid growth , with the annual growth rate accelerating from just under 1 per cent in 1921-1931 , to about 2 per cent after 1951 . The population growth in any country/economy/geographical area, is normally determined by Birth rate or fertility rate Death rate or Mortality rate. Migration In case of India, migration is, and has been, a negligible component hence population changes may originate from variations in fertility and mortality .

4. India’s twentieth century growth has occurred with an initially stable, and then slowly declining fertility (as measured by the crude birth rate). Thus, as in the case of 18th & 19th century Europe, population increase has been the result of fall in mortality. Kingsley Davis tabulated the crude death rates for the period 1911-1948 and Found an unmistakable downtrend . examined the infant mortality rates and found that they revealed a high point in 1918 and a decline thereafter . Davis was also aware that many deaths escaped registration so he also corrected the registered birth and death rates for each decade on the basis of life tables calculated from successive censuses. The picture that appeared from Davis’ study was Before 1921 CBR was above 40/1000 accompanied by CDR/1000 only slightly lower than birth rates (still above 40) But after 1921 Birth rates still remained high (above 40) and fell only slightly On the other hand, the death rate fell significantly below the birth rate(and below 40).

5. Davis: two major explanations of declining Mortality rate: The control of famines by the development of roads, railways and irrigation , and The checking of the ravages of epidemic disease by modem medicine . Although the above two explanations are quite plausible and logical Sumit Guha points out the available data does not seem to support it. About 20% of the cultivated area was irrigated in 1901 By 1930 this percentage had increased to a mere 23% - hardly an increase sufficient to banish famine. It is also difficult to demonstrate that roads and railways were much improved in scale and reach in the first decades of the present century compared to the last decade of the previous one, so as to preclude the reoccurrence the tremendous famines that marked the turn of the century.

6. As regards the role of the epidemic disease , Davis remarked. There is one important reason why India was, during the last two centuries, the home of great epidemics: being exposed to the foreign contact for the first time on such a great scale . The nature of bacterial parasitism is apparently such that, at least in many cases, a natural immunity is built up after a number of generations of exposure and hence isolated and stable communities do not suffer much because they have developed a natural immunity to old infections and are not exposed to new ones. India’s medieval stagnation was broken down later than that of Europe , so period of virulent diseases occurred much later. Seemingly even without medical aid, India’s full participation in world contact would have bought her the worst of the epidemics and then within one or two more centuries, a gradual immunity reducing their virulence But scientific medicine which finally stopped most epidemics in Europe is coming to the aid of Asia. Already public health work has brought a sharp decline in Indian epidemics

7. According to Sumit Guha the above view (Davis) interestingly anticipates ideas developed by later scholars. W. H. McNeill’s thesis that confluences of disease pools resulted from increased human movement by sea and land ; and McNeill’s suggestion that growing immunities checked the virulence of many diseases before medical and sanitary measures could have had any effect . Furthermore, Davis’s faith in medicines is also contested by medical historians , e.g. McKeown has pointed out that Effective therapies for many important infections was not available till the World War II but the decline in morbidity (state of being diseased or unhealthy i.e. incidence of ill health in a population) and mortality from them began much earlier. Ira Klein , who has analysed the Indian experience in the period under discussion concluded that government health measures had only a limited impact in containing mortality from major diseases .

8. McKeown : considering the British evidence  mortality decline between 1750 and 1850, and ended by attributing it to improvements in the nutritional status of the population which led to improved resistance to disease According to Guha , It is fairly certainly not applicable to India . He points out that Klien has demonstrated this by careful consideration of Indian data that for the inter-war period Income per head stagnated. Food availability declined There were large gaps in recommended consumption and actual availability of various foods .

9. Pattern of age-specific mortality decline

10. Morality decline be explained for India This stability in agricultural production (noted by S. R. Sen in 1967 ) during the inter-war period was in great part due to stability in rainfall (the underlying metrological phenomena was analysed by S. K. Ray in 1971 ). Although Sumit Guha does not deny that government’s efforts to control kala-azar , small pox and cholera may explain part of the improvement but he feels the bulk is due to stability of agricultural production in this period. S. R. Sen in 1967: stability in agricultural production: The Second quarter of the century (1925-50) saw a stagnation in output accompanied by convergence between peaks and troughs so that agriculture was stagnant but stable S. K. Ray in 1971: stability in rainfall: the relative stable and unstable period were in great part (in the past) due to rainfall (or the lack of it)

11. Guha attributed a substantial part of the improvement in mortality between the wars to the increase in the stability of food-grain production in the same period ( Sumit Guha’s argument is on stability in food intake rather than improvement in the long run average consumption ). This in turn depends on two general propositions: first, that immunity is weakened by a fall in food intake to below some minimum level; and second, that severity of illness is related to the intensity of exposure to the infection . A weather-induced harvest shortfall would reduce employment and earnings in the countryside , and through a rise in prices also affect wage earners, artisans and the poorer classes in towns. Christophers : poorer adapt themselves to circumstances by proportionately restricting the amount of food they take. Thus weakened, numbers of people would fall prey to the infections already present around them, or dormant within them. Secondary infections could follow the primary ones. So death from disease would reach out from social groups and regions immediately affected by the scarcity and set up chains of infection persisting beyond the season of crop failure itself

12. The Indian population in the second quarter of the twentieth century lived longer because the weather Gods enabled it to maintain a stable level of moderate malnutrition rather than alternately plunge between adequate nutrition and severe malnutrition as it was doing earlier. This basic improvement was supplemented by the withdrawal of the plague, the non-recurrence of the lethal influenza, and perhaps by public health measures that checked kala-azar , cholera and smallpox: but climatic change was the most important source of improvement in mortality .