"November 14, 1953

Occupational Distribution of Population:

THE ECONOMIC WEEKLY

November 14, 1953

All India — Industries and Ser-vices

There were in all 1,044 lakhs of self-supporting persons in the whole of India, or constituting 129.3 Per cent of the total population, of whom 710 lakhs or 68.1 per cent were agri­culturists and 334 lakhs or 31.9 per cent were non-agriculturists. The breakdown of the latter is as follows:

The last category, however, is a mixed one, since it includes not only those who derive their income from non-agricultural property or live on pensions, remittances and scholar­ships, etc, but also beggars and vaga-rants and all others l iving on income derived from non-productive activity. Apart from these curiosities of classi­fication, what stands out from this table is the small number of em­ployers and very large number of self-employed, even among the non-agriculturists. No one is classified as an employer merely because he or she has domestic servants. The self-employed, it should be noted, are more numerous than employers and employees combined. Leaving out those who live on ' unearned ' i n ­come derived either from agriculture or industry, the numbers of those who derive their income from profits, and wages and salaries were as fol­lows :

F rom the point of view of types of income earned, those who earn profits are much,more than twice as numerous as those who earn wages and salaries, 'The economic signifi­cance of this finding can hardly be over-exaggerated.

6. Commerce , , .. , , Retail trade otherwise unclassified Retail trade in foodstuffs (including

beverages and narcotics) Retail trade in fuel (including

petrol) Retail trade in textile and leather

goods Wholesale trade in foodstuffs Wholesale trade in other than food­

stuffs Real estate Insurance Money-lending, banking and other

financial business

7. Transport Storage & Communications Transport and communications other­

wise unclassified and incidental services

Transport by road Transport by water Transport by air Railway transport Storage and warehousing . . Postal services Telegraph services Telephone services Wireless services

8. Health, Education and Public Admi­nistration Medical and other health services . . Educational services and research . . Police (other than village watch­

men ) Village officers and servants (includ­

ing village watchmen) Employees of municipalities and

local boards (not including per­sons classifiable under any other division)

Employees of State Governments (not including persons classifiable under any other division)

Employees of Union Government (not including persons classifiable under any other division)

Employees of non-Indian Govern­ments

9. Services not elsewhere specified Services otherwise unclassified . . Domestic services (not including

services rendered by members of family households to one another)

Barbers and beauty shops Laundries and laundry services Hotels, restaurants and eating houses Recreation services Legal and business services Arts, letters and journalism Religious, charitable and welfare

services

o means less than 500. — means nil.

The sub-groups may not add up exactly to the group total owing to round­ing off. Personnel in the Army, Navy and Air Force are included under employees of Union Government. Source: Census of India, Page No. 3.

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