Population Trends in The Brahmaputra Valley

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In this study, I have made a modest empirical attempt to reconstruct from scattered sources and incomplete records the history of population change in the Brahmaputra Valley of Assam of the period 1881 to 1931, covering five decades of demographic transition. In its restricted sense, this is a work on the regional historical demography of Assam and would form part of the larger corpus of knowledge called Regional Population Accounting or Regional Human Book-keeping. It is well-known, but nonetheless important to observe, that demography, construed as accounting of human units and of vital events, is a science of measurement of historical phenomena. No such science can be effectively designed without understanding what it exactly intends to measure and what the measurement signifies. It is also important to know to what extent this science can be reasonably expected to measure demographic phenomena whose dynamics operate ceaselessly.

Poverty and Population Explosion are generally co-related in both popular and professional opinion current at this time. The movement of people and immigration, in its economic aspects, often figures in discussions at both laical and scientific levels. Likewise, vital events like births and deaths are no less commonly discussed and debated topics in connection with problems of birth control and the general improvement of health and hygiene and the consequent rise in the expectation of life.

The complete socio-economic study of any region must start from a study of its population. Such a study has to do with things which are of vital concern for the continuing welfare of various socio-economic and ethnic groups. The number of human units in any space preconditions not only the Types of mutual relationships but also the level and degree of social cultural and economic advancement. In this sense, no study can be more fundamentally important and at the same time more generally useful and interesting than a study of regional demographic change. It is true that a demographic study such as recorded in this volume may be concerned primarily with a period of the past, but it does not lose its value for this reason as present demographic facts are undeniably linked with the past. With these facts in mind, I have under- taken a study of population dynamics of the Brahmaputra Valley of Assam during the period 1881-1931. In this study, I have analysed population demographically from four major points of view: number and distribution; composition, components and characteristics; nature of dynamic vital processes; and trends and fluctuations. I have explained at the appropriate place the scope and objective of the study, including the methodology adopted and the sources of statistical data and documentary evidences used.

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