Burma: Census of India 1901 Vol. I - Khamkoo

1
*3® REPORT ON THE CENSUS OF BURMA.
The above applies more to the occupations themselves than to the classes,
orders and sub-orders of which they form the constituent parts. In the following
remarks where comparisons are drawn they will in the main be between the sub-order
and order totals for the two enumerations.
207. The total of sub-order 1 (Civil service of the State) is 69,831 as against
.
class A—Go m
86,887 in 1 891. An examination of these totals side
by side with the totals for sub-order 4 (Army), which,
despite the reduction in the regular troops and the Military Police has risen from
30,828 to 33,146, inclines me to the belief that the 1891 figures for sub-order 1
included a number of Military Police. I can account in no other way for the decrease.
Sub-order 2 (Service of Local and Municipal bodies) shows an increase
from 4,952 to 6,337 an^ sub-order 3 (Village service) has leapt from 11,733 to
73. 2 1 3- This latter rise bears eloquent testimony to the extension of the village
headman system throughout the province during the ten )r
ears that have just
elapsed.
Order III, comprising sub-orders 6 and 7, is headed " Service of Native and
Foreign States " and contains figures in respect of Shan Sawbwas and their
immediate followers. As the Shan States were barely dealt with in 1891 it is not
surprising that the total of this order should have risen from. 192 to 8,478.
In Order II (Defence) of Class A the proportion of actual workers to depend 1-
ents (74*35 to 25*65) is unusually high. This is, in view of the foreign composition
of the military element in the country, natural enough. The indigenous elementis,
however, so much the more predominant in Class A as a whole that its proportion of
actual workers is only 39 per cent., which, curiously enough, is lower than that of
any other of the classes.
208. The total of Class B (Pasture and Agriculture) is 6,947,945, or 67 per
CL of^total population of the province. In 1 89
Class S-Pasture and agriculture.
the corresponding figure was 4,879,490; in other
words, as my predecessor pointed out, the Pastoral and Agricultural class then comprised
6,41 5 out of every 10,000 persons of both sexes. It will thus be seen that the
proportion of agriculturists in the wider sense of the term has risen by 285 per
ten thousand during the past decade. The opening up of the delta districts to the
foreign and Upper Burma immigrant must be looked upon as part cause of this
rise, but the main factor in the increase is, no doubt, the inclusion in the operations
of the political areas in which the agricultural element preponderated. Sub-orders
8 to 13 inclusive are comprised in Class B. The first of these (stock breeding
and dealing) shows a general increase in the case of nearly .all occupations.
Herdsmen and persons supported by herdsmen have risen in number from 22,273
to 46,463. The 1 89 1 figures were, Mr. Eales implied, smaller than what one would
have expected had it not been for the fact that herding is pursued more as a.subsidiary
than as a principal occupation, and the rise that has taken place in the past
10 years calls for no special comment. Elephant catchers are fewer in number than
.10 years ago. Twelve males and a female have been returned as camel breeders.
-It is probable that this is an error in classification unless the thirteen individuals
were immigrants and camel breeding was their last occupation in India. Pig
breeders are a good deal more numerous than at the last Census.
Sub-order 9 deals with «the training and care of animals. The only item
in the sub-order that attracts attention is the large total of 6,4x5 under occupation
No. 35 (Vermin and animal catchers). Here I think that in a certain number
of cases the entry of 36 (Rent receivers) has been wrongly read as 35by:the
tabulators and entered as such in the tabulation sheets.
209. In all 717,753 persons came into -the landholder and tenant category
, -, which sub-order. 10 embraces. There were two occupation
heads in this sub-order, namely, ;3'6. '(Rentier
eeivers) ,and 37 (Rent payers), and of these the former furnished ithe lion's
"Share of workers. Three^classes, farm- servants, field labourers and taungya. or
;jhum cultivators, made up the total of 5,739,523 described 1
under sub-order -i'i -as
Agricultural labourers. Subsidiary Table No. IXA appended to this -chapter
:shows us that this sub-order alone contains 55*38 per cent, or well over halt i&