49

that require our serious consideration. In the first place,
the proportion as it is at present must not be allowed to
fall and must be maintained over a series of years at any
cost. Secondly, all possible efforts must be made to in-
crease in future the number of adult workers or at least to
increase their ability to secure livelihood for the total
population. A decrease in the number of working adult
population may be due either to emigration of adult work-
ers or to deaths. The increase in their number may be
due directly to immigration of adult workers or more usu-
ally to boys coming of age. Thus the increase will vary
with the death-rates among boys and girls, children and
infants. It will also ultimately be affected by the inflow
of new population or by the birth-rate. The question of
increasing the ability or effectiveness of the existing num-
ber of earners involves a consideration of the problems of
sanitation and health as they affect the average expecta-
tion of life. Thus this seemingly simple topic of the pro-
portion of working population raises fundamental issues
like the birth-rate and death-rate, immigration and emi-
gration, average expectation of life and others. Having
considered the proportion of the effective population to
the total we shall now proceed to discuss the factor of
birth-rate and death-rate and the factor of migration as
they affect the total population as well as the proportion
of effective population. We shall first examine what
part these factors played in the history of the population
of this village.

Historical mew of the population of the village : The
following are the figures of population1 of Atgam at differ-
ent dates :

• 1 The population in 1926-27 was counted by the author; the figures for
the other years are those of the Official Census.