 Collect information from the Economic Survey for various years published

 Collect information from the Economic Survey for various years published by the Ministry of Finance, Government of India, on various items of export from India and its imports. Compare these with imports and exports from the pre-independence era. Also find out the names of prominent ports which now handle the bulk of India’s foreign trade. Not to scale every ten years such census operations were carried out. Before , India was in the first stage of demographic transition . The second stage of transition began after . However, neither the total population of India nor the rate of population growth at this stage was very high. The various social development indicators were also not quite encouraging. The overall literacy level was less than per cent. Out of this, the female literacy level was at a negligible low of about seven per cent. Public health facilities were either unavailable to large chunks of population or, when available, were highly inadequate. Consequently, water and air-borne diseases were rampant and took a huge toll on life. No wonder, the overall mortality rate was very high and in that, particularly, the infant mortality rate was quite alarming—about per thousand in contrast to the present infant mortality rate of per thousand. Life expectancy was also very low— years in contrast to the present years. In the absence of reliable data, it is difficult to specify the extent of poverty at that time but there is no doubt that extensive poverty prevailed in India during the colonial period which contributed to the worsening profile of India’s population of the time. . O CCUPATIONAL S TRUCTURE During the colonial period, the occupational structure of India, i.e., distribution of working persons across different industries and sectors, showed little sign of change. The agricultural sector accounted for Fig. . A large section of India’s population did not have basic needs such as housing the largest share of workforce, which usually remained at a high of - per cent while the manufacturing and the services sectors accounted for only and - per