ABSTRACT
From time immemorial India has been among the most densely settled portions of our planet. One estimate holds that the population had already reached 100 million during the apogee of the Mauryan empire in the 3rd century BC. While this obviously cannot be substantiated, the figure is not unthinkable for a high civilization based largely on the intensive cultivation of rice. Over the following two millennia the population underwent long periods of slow growth, marked by high birth rates, slightly in excess, on average, of high death rates, interspersed by periods of dramatic population loss occasioned by times of marked political instability and, locally, by such Malthusian checks as famine, pestilence, war, and natural catastrophe. The first comprehensive census, taken in 1881, showed a population (probably undercounted) of 254 million, with another 2.8 million in Ceylon. (Other parts of South Asia were not to take censuses until considerably later.) Population growth continued to be slow until 1921, with large areas of actual famineinduced decline in most decades. The 1921 figure was 319 million for India and 4.5 million for Ceylon. Thereafter, population began to grow at a steadily increasing rate as public health measures, the spread of modern medicine, and famine relief strategies caused death rates to plummet, while birth rates fell only marginally from their traditionally high levels of almost 50 per 1,000 per year. When India and Pakistan gained their independence in 1947, their combined population was around 415 million, with birth rates of about 43, death rates of 30, and rates of natural increase of about 1.3 percent per year.
