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Rh tax rises from 1% on income not exceeding $10,000 to 3% on income in excess of $50,000, and the corporation tax is at the rate of 4½%. While the rates at which the state taxes are imposed are thus not immoderate, they create when added to the Federal tax a serious burden. The newer state laws, while centrally administered, provide for the return of a substantial portion of the tax to the county or local governments.

E. R. A. Seligman, The Income Tax (2nd ed. 1914); K. K. Kennan, Income Taxation (1910); D. O. Kinsman, The Income Tax in the Commonwealths of the United States (1903); R. M. Haig (Ed.) The Federal Income Tax (1921); George E. Holmes, Federal Taxes (1920 ed.); Robert H. Montgomery, Income Tax Procedure (1921); Federal Excess Profits Tax Procedure (1921); New York State Income Tax Procedure (1921); Standard Statistics Co., Standard Income Tax Manual (1921); The Corporation Trust Co., The Federal Income Tax Service (1913-21); Treasury Department, Bureau of Internal Revenue, Regulations 45 (1920 ed.); Income Tax Rulings (1919-21); Income Tax Primer (1918-21); Income Tax Primer for Farmers (1920-1), Excess-Profits Tax Primer (1918-21); Statistics of Income (1916-8); Annual Report, Commissioner of Internal Revenue. For New York, see H. M. Powell, Taxation of Corporations and Personal Incomes and for state income taxes in general, see reports of the State Tax Commission or Commissioner of Wisconsin, New York, Massachusetts, etc., and the Annual Proceedings and monthly Bulletin of the National Tax Association.
 * (T. S. A.)

 INDIA (see ).—The sixth decennial census of India (British India and the native states) was taken on March 18 1921. The provisional figures gave a total pop. of 319,075,132, of which 247,138,396 is the pop. of British India and 71,936,736 that of the native states. The corresponding figures of the decennial census of 1911 were: British India 243,933,178 and native states 71,223,218. The rate of increase in the decade ending 1921 is thus only 1.2%, a notable drop in comparison with the advance of the pop. in the immediately preceding decade, but nearly identical with the results of the 1901 census. The growth of the Indian pop. in the last 40 years had been singularly uneven. The percentages of increase in the several decennial periods were as follow:—9.6% in 1881-91; 1.4% in 1891-1901; 6.4% in 1901-11; 1.2% in 1911-21.

Vital Conditions.—These remarkable variations are, as might be expected, mainly due to the character of the agricultural seasons and the absence or presence of great epidemics of disease. The decade of 1881-91 was one of recovery from the great drought which devastated the Madras and Bombay Presidencies in 1876-8. The seasons were generally good and food was cheap and abundant. The next decade (1891-1901) was marked by one of the worst visitations of drought and famine, extending over the years 1896 and 1897, that India has known. It affected a population of nearly 70 millions, and was especially intense in the United Provinces, Bihar, the Central Provinces, Madras and Bombay. In the spring of 1897 4,000,000 people were receiving relief and the mortality, despite the efforts of the State to alleviate distress, was great. In 1896 bubonic plague appeared in Bombay, to which port it had probably been brought by infected rats in grain ships from China, and from thence it spread in an epidemic form into nearly every part of India. Under the ravages of plague and famine the population actually decreased in the decade in several provinces and native states, and the rate of advance for the whole of India was only 1.4%. In the next decade (1901-11) conditions were better. But a serious failure of the monsoon rains occurred in Upper India in 1908, and many parts of the country were devastated by plague. The growth of the population was curiously uneven in the different provinces and native states. The Central Provinces and Berar recorded an increase of 18%, the native states attached to those provinces an increase of nearly 30%, and the important state of Hyderabad one of 20%. These high figures represent the filling-up of famine losses in some of the less populous regions of India. In the more thickly populated provinces of Madras, Bombay and Bengal the increase ranged from 5% to 8%, while in the United Provinces and the Punjab the pop. actually declined. The very moderate rate of increase (6.4% in the decade) returned for India as a whole represented the mean of widely different provincial rates and concealed the recuperative power which the Indian population exhibited in those parts of the country where conditions were favourable.

The decade 1911-21 showed the lowest figure of increase since the decennial census was instituted in 1871. Up to 1917 the seasons were normally good and the public health not unsatisfactory. Notwithstanding the World War and its economic effect in raising prices and restricting the supply of necessary imports, the country was generally prosperous. A comparison of the yearly birth-rates with the corresponding death-rates showed an increasing population. But in 1918 a double calamity befell India. The monsoon rains failed over the greater part of the country. The losses of crops were estimated at 20 million tons or one-fourth of the average production. Food grains, milk and other nourishing food were at famine prices.

The Government met the situation by importing wheat from Australia and rice from Burma, by a rigorous control over existing food stocks and by various relief measures. But distress was general and acute. On the top of this disaster a virulent form of influenza spread throughout India. Within the space of four or five months the epidemic was responsible for five million deaths in British India and a million in native states. The death rate of 1918 in British India exceeded 62 per mille or nearly double the. birth-rate, as against a normal death-rate of about 30 per mille. In several provinces it was markedly higher. The United Provinces returned a death-rate of 83 per mille, the Punjab 88 per mille and the Bombay Presidency 93 per mille. Thus the decade which had opened prosperously closed on a people impoverished by scarcity and decimated by disease. The facts are reflected in the census returns.

Several provinces and a number of native states show an actual decrease of population. The pop. declined 2.6% in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, 1.6% in Bombay, 1.4% in Bihar and Orissa. The pop. of the United Provinces in 1921 was actually less by several millions than it was in 1891. The conditions of life in this densely populated tract give cause for anxiety. In the Central Provinces and Berar, which in 1901-11 had shown an increase of 18%, the pop. was practically stationary. The important state of Hyderabad, in which the pop. had increased by 20% in 1901-11, recorded a loss of 6.9% and the Rajputana states a loss of 6.4%. To this depressing record a few favoured tracts are exceptions. The pop. of the Travancore state, in the extreme south of the peninsula, increased by nearly 17%, and this on the top of an increase of 16% in the preceding decade. The pop. of Burma, a province which is happily exempt from the droughts and epidemics that afflict the Indian continent and in which the standard of living is considerably higher, continues to expand. In 1901-11 it increased by 15.5%, and in 1911-21 by 9%.

In brief, India is prodigal of human life and prodigal of death to a degree unknown in Western countries. The population nearly everywhere presses close on the limits of bare subsistence. It is largely dependent on the chances of the harvests and the vicissitudes of the seasons. It is peculiarly helpless by reason of its ignorance of natural laws and adherence to hurtful traditions and observances: and it is an easy victim of many diseases which science elsewhere has extirpated or set bounds to. A persistently high birth-rate is constantly kept in check or even nullified by an excessive death-rate. A stationary population is not in itself an evil. But in India it is attained by a profuse expenditure of human life and at the cost of much suffering and misery. In the sphere of social and sanitary reform an immense task and a great opportunity lie before the reformed governments of India.

The statistics of education, occupations, religions and castes were not available for the decade 1911-21 up to Aug. 1921. The census of 1911 had shown that the reforming sect of the Arya Somaj in Northern India grew from 92,419 to 243,514; Sikhs increased from 2,155,339 to 3,014,466; and Christians from 2,923,241 to 3,876,196.

The Morley-Minto Era.—Nov. 1910 saw the close of the Morley-Minto era. Lord Minto then completed the fifth year of his viceroyalty and was succeeded by Lord Hardinge of Penshurst. About the same time Lord Morley exchanged the India Office for the less exacting duties of Lord President of the Council. His successor was the Marquess of Crewe. Many circumstances combined to make the period the opening of a new chapter in the political development of India. The advent of the Radical party to power in England in the autumn of 1905 quickened ambitions and aspirations for a larger measure of self-government that had been steadily gathering force among Indian politicians. They believed that Parliament, as constituted by the result of the recent general election, would not be indifferent to Indian grievances. In Lord Morley they saw the veteran champion of Liberalism and expected much of him. His position was difficult. He refused to undo the “partition” of Bengal. He recognized the difficulties of the Indian Government, but was convinced that a moderate measure of political advance was overdue. He was accused by some of having “shelved the principles of a lifetime,” and by others of undermining the foundations of British rule in India. In the considered judgment of the Montagu-Chelmsford report the reforms he effected “constituted a real and important advance.” They were “essentially of an evolutionary character”—a natural extension of the previously existing system, a change of degree and not of kind. Lord Morley, in his Recollections (1917), has given us interesting glimpses of his relations with the Viceroy, Lord Minto. Though widely different in temperament, training and political outlook, they appear to have worked together in essential harmony.