Brief History: Population

The city of Cawnpore came into existence from merging of several villages, each village had a small population and limited commercial movement. But since the time it came under British influence (1773), commercial activities in the area increased, rise in population was evident. East India Co. established an agency here in 1776, and British businessman started coming to the area. Later in 1778 forces from Bilgram were shifted here to protect their lives and business, and after that people from all classes started pouring in, Businessman came because it was safe and the city guaranteed easy connections to other business places, artisans, traders and labor started coming to sell their products to the army (eatables, shoes, clothing etc…) and in search of employment.

The trade & population kept growing, a city started being born out of village and in 1803 Cawnpore was declared a district. No formal account of population exists till 1846, but first data regarding population of Cawnpore is found in Robert Montgomery’s “Statical Report of Cawnpore” in 1847. According to the report population of Civilian area was 58821 and Cantonment was 49975 (excluding Europeans and soilders). As per UN Demographical year book Cawnpore was amongst the 300 hundred cities of the world having population more than 1 Lakh.

An interesting point is that such a massive increase in population was not supported by the high “Birth rate”. Infact as per a Government report dated 31st March 1944 number of children born was ‘11691’ and number of people died was ‘14379’, which shows Death rate was more than Birth rate, so Growth rate of the city was negative. But the population kept exploding an alarming rate.

This was major due to coming of large number of workers and peasants from nearby places and neboring states, after the beginning of industrial development in 1860, American civil war and the two World Wars, opened new doors for development and city saw opening of one mill after another. Incoming Laborers were cheap and proved to be a boon to the industry.

An estimate made in 1912, (done for water, power and other municipal reasons), shows that after 50 years (till 1962) Kanpur’s population will be 2.5 lakh. But till 1947 it was 8, 79,419.

Average rise in percentage increase of population in 1931-41 was almost 100% in the city. When compared to other cities of UP, this was huge, in Lucknow it was 41%, Agra 23.6%, Allahabad 41.4%, Banaras 28%. The data in the table shows that population doubled in 10 years (1931-41) and it took just five more years to double itself again (1941-47).

Population density per sq mile in 1931 was 24754 i.e. 39 person/ acre and in 1958 it was 71360 i.e. 111.5 person/acre.

Population: 1991 Census-24.18 Lakh’s and as per 2001 Census: 27.72 Lakh’s (Male: 14.83 Lakh’s, Female: 12.89 Lakh’s)