Current Literature
INDIA IN 1930-31 (OFFICIAL HANDBOOK) By the" High Commissioner for India.
This indispensable annual, India in 1930-31 (official hand- book), 5s., appears with two new features, an enormous increase in size (to 661 pp. of text) making it double its usual bulk, and a strong and insistent tone of special pleading in the sketch of recent political developments and controversies. This is mentioned not by way of censure, but as showing how the principle of responsibility to the people has invaded even Government publications, which are anxious to explain and justify each action and reaction as they narrate it. In any case, the apologia is free from unfairness and is entirely honest ; and the whole book is crammed with information. Nothing of the many-sided life of India is omitted. Progress in science, agricultural developments, geography, communi- cations, health and science, all are made into fascinating reading. If we are willing to pause from -politics awhile, we may care to dwell on the fact that the Argentine, New Zealand, Germany, France, England and Wales, Sweden, and India have the following birth-rates per thousand : 30.1, 19, 17.9, 17.7, 16.3, 15.2, 35.5. " If we exclude widows, practically every individual member of India's enormous population is in a position to propagate throughout the whole period of life during which he or she is physically capable of doing so " (p. 149). But customs and conditions of living give these death-rates (same order) : 13.6, .8.8, 12.6, 18, 13,4, 12.2, and 25.9. It is not easy to select amid so much of importance and interest ; but the _discussion of the forests and the, accounts of successful experiments in improving the kinds 'of tobacco and sugar grown stand out. Clearly, India will soon be looking for greatly enlarged markets for these products, and as a Dominion will be entitled to encourage- ment in England. The book is excellently equipped with maps and diagrams.
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