§ SIR WILLIAM WEDDERBURNI beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether he will request the Viceroy, in his usual weekly telegram stating the number of persons on relief, also to include the number of deaths due to the famine in each of the affected districts; and, whether he has ascertained by telegraph the number of deaths due to famine in the Central Provinces?
§ LORD GEORG E H A MILTONAs I informed the hon. Member on the 5th inst., it is not possible to associate 178 with the telegrams describing the weekly progress of relief operations and the numbers receiving relief any statistics relating to mortality for the same period. An interval of time must elapse between the period to which vital statistics in India refer and their receipt in this country. In a Dispatch (seepage 176 of the Blue-book on Famine) I anticipated the hon. Member's request by asking for:—
The earliest possible information of my considerable rise of the death-rate above normal, and also a periodical report of continued mortality of an unusually high rate in any province.I have also requested the Government of India to let me know the total number of deaths from all causes in the Central Provinces in 1896 as soon as the statistics are available.