Rohtak, more than one hundred years ago
Would you have expected irrigation and canals to lead to inferior health outcomes?
Aword of caution first. Since this column is about District Gazetteers, I am going to burden you with quotes I find interesting. “The mosquitoes of Gohana are said not to bite: This may be true as regards natives of the country; they certainly bite Europeans.” This is from the Rohtak District Gazetteer for 1883-84. Times change. What strikes me most when I read this Rohtak Gazetteer is the role of the community. Consider the watch and ward system. “There are 702 village watchmen in the 481 inhabited villages: this number gives an average of one to every 790 heads of population and 200 houses or shops — the last is double the proportion fixed by government… The pay of the watchmen is usually at the rate of ~3 per mensem, but they eke it out in many ways. Not a few do tailor’s work, and where they belong to the village, whose custodian they are, they can cultivate a little land. The thikar chaukidari is a system of private watch and ward undertaken by the villagers, themselves and is managed thus: The names of all able-bodied men are written on pieces of potsherds, and placed in a vessel in the village rest-house. Day by day the names of as many men as are needed to keep guard at certain fixed places in the village and on the roads are drawn out, and these men watch from nightfall to morning. The process is repeated daily till the lots are exhausted, when it begins over again with another vessel, into which in the meanwhile the lots drawn daily have been placed. The custom is a useful one, and should be maintained.”
The 1883-84 Gazetteer was revised in 1910 and let me now quote from this revised version. Once you read it, it is obvious enough. But a priori, would you have expected irrigation and canals to lead to inferior health outcomes? “There are parts or the district however where the figures are not so favourable, and the people themselves recognise clearly that a canal with a high water level in the sub-soil is a source of sickness: ‘Where flows the canal water there go sickness and strife.’ …Gohana town has a much higher death rate than any of the other four which are all in dry tracts, and though the evil effects of swampage were never so disastrous here as in Kamal, and have been largely removed by the remodeling of the canal system, it still remains true that the old Gohana tahsil and the better watered parts of Rohtak are more malarial, more productive of lung, spleen and bowel disorders, and more the haunt of plague than the rest of the district.”
Remember that the following was written more than one hundred years ago, probing Hindu-Muslim differentials in sex ratios in Rohtak. “Custom argues against the belief no less strongly than statistics; for the purchase of brides is admitted by the Jats — with a certain amount of apology and obvious sense of shame — to be a practice that gains ground every year… There is a sudden drop in the proportion of females in the fifth year of life and in the case of Hindus there is one in the third year as well... From 10 to 20 there is a remarkable drop in the number of Hindu women. It is probable that there really is a considerable decrease here, for this is the nubile age for Hindu girls, and there is no doubt that many fall victims to early child bearing, but it is not improbable that just because these are the nubile years the age of a good number of girls who have not yet found husbands is minimized, which would increase the apparent scarcity of girls of this age. ...The first outstanding conclusion is that the marriage age is later for Muhammadans than for Hindus and later for males than for females within each class — facts which of course need no statistics to prove them. The next point is that infant marriage is the exception and not the rule, and that even child marriage — as distinct from infant marriage — on the one hand and adult marriage on the other is comparatively rare amongst Muhammadans of the male sex… The next fact which is noteworthy is the largo number of Hindu males that die old bachelors… These considerations and the figures support the belief, which most officers conversant with this tract of country have entertained, in the existence sub rosa of a system of polyandry… It is the concomitant of female infanticide.”
This was a time of famines and an English rendering of a popular song is evocative of what happens. “The traders collected old and bad grain, and sold it for an enormous price. The beam of their scales broke, and their weights were worn away (by constant use), the trader lived, and the Jat died. The carts remained useless, for the oxen were dead; and the bride went to her husband's house without the due formalities.” But also, “The effect of the railway was seen in the two most recent famines when large quantities of bhusa were imported from the Panjab at specially reduced rates. Vast heaps of straw were to be seen at the side of the line at every station and many cattle were saved which would otherwise have perished or been sold or driven out of the district.”