INDIA'S POPULATION Sts,—In "News of the Week" you quote Lord
Munster's statement on the subject of India's food supply. The hard fact, he said, was that India's population is increasing by 5,000,00o a year and her food supply hardly increasing at all. The Government, he said, was working on a plan to increase production by 50 per cent, in the next ten years and too per cent, in the next fifteen at a capital cost of b50,000,000 and a recurring annual expenditure of kis,000,000. Your own comment on this is: "This is a statement of the first moment. Lord Samuel was fully justified in describing it as the most important the House has heard on Indian affairs for many a long day." I read this again thinking that perhaps you were sarcastic. What will India's population be at the end of the fifteen years? It is difficult to work it out, but at a rough guess I should put it at an increase of 15o,000,000. One might hazard the opinion that there is something to be said for infanticide after all.—Yours faithfully, J. G. GILCHRIST.
Kerse, Lesmahagow, Lanarkshire.
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