What would you do if you wanted to know the rate of inflation or retail prices of foodgrains in a given district, say, in 1925? Where would you find the general level of employment, or unemployment for that matter, and the general level of wages in that district during the early 1970s?
The only reliable source of information on a plethora of aspects at the micro-level is the District Gazetteer whose publication has been discontinued in the year 2000 by the then united Andhra Pradesh Government.
That was the end of a glorious ‘tradition’ in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana which started under the British rule in the 18th century.
The only source of information on land rates over a time during the rule of Nizam was the District Gazetteer of those times.
Another example of the micro-level information is the fact that trade in opium used to be legal and it was a source of income for the Nizam’s government.
The need for a District Gazetteer was felt by top officials in Adilabad district administration during the process of reorganisation of district in September-October.
A search however, revealed that the record section of the Collectorate had only one copy of Adilabad District Gazetteer from 1976 and it came in handy for officials while going through the exercise of dividing Adilabad into four units.
Revised version
Though the year of publication of the nine volume Imperial Gazetteer of India is believed to be 1881, the Adilabad District Gazetteer mentions the revised version of Imperial Gazetteer of India in 26 volumes in the early years of last century, one of which was devoted to the erstwhile Princely State of Hyderabad, of which Adilabad formed a part.
After Independence, the Central Government formulated an all-India scheme for revision of the District Gazetteers which the AP government accepted in 1958 followed with constitution of the AP District Gazetteers Editorial Board with the Chief Secretary as Chairman in 1967.
Department disappears
The District Gazetteers department also ceased to be an independent entity in 2000 and the staff now work under the State Archives Department. It is with them that copies of Gazetteers published until that year can be purchased, according to sources.
The District Handbook of Statistics, now brought out by the Chief Planning department in respective districts, was seemingly an attempt made by the State government to replace the District Gazetteer.
“Fund crunch has resulted in these handbooks not being published periodically,” observed Adilabad Chief Planning Officer V.S.C. Kesava Rao.
