§ Mr. VINCENT KENNEDYasked the Under-Secretary of State for India if ho will state the number of deaths recorded in India as attributable to starvation and famine for the last 100 years; what is the annual amount of revenue collected in India, giving the amounts of the same allocated for local and imperial purposes respectively; and will he say how many persons have been imprisoned or deported from India under the ordinary law and otherwise for the last five years?
The UNDER-SECRETARY for INDIA (the Master of Elibank)The number of deaths in India in the last 100 years from starvation and famine is not ascertainable, as death registration is of comparatively recent origin in British India, and is only very imperfectly established in native States. The gross revenue received in India in 1908–9, according to the revised estimates, was £69,035,100, of which about 45 millions was allocated to Imperial and about 24 millions to provincial purposes. Those figures include considerable receipts which are not taxation. The total num- 602 ber of persons sentenced to imprisonment in British India in the five years ending 1907 (the last for which figures are available) was 785,857. The number of persons dealt with for the five years ending 1908 under Bengal Regulation III. of 1818 and the two other similar modes of procedure is 22; eleven of these cases were connected with seditious movements against the British Government, of which two were in May, 1906, and nine in December. 1906.
§ Mr. REESWith what figures of total population has that figure of 22 deported persons to be compared?