POPULATION-INDIA: Census Findings Bring Cheer

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Mar 28 2001 (IPS) - India’s population has crossed the one billion mark, but the findings of the latest decennial census have also given much reason to cheer to national development planners.

According to preliminary findings of the February headcount, the world’s second most populous nation has added 181 million people in the last 10 years — more than the population of the world’s fifth most populous nation Brazil.

On Mar. 1, 2001, India’s population was estimated at 1.02 billion. The country’s most populous northern Uttar Pradesh state had 166 million people — more than the population of South Asian neighbour Pakistan.

“There is much to cheer about even if the relentless rise in the numbers beyond one billion is bound to dilute any sense of satisfaction,” said the leading national daily, ‘The Hindustan Times’.

The first good news is that India managed to cut its decadal population growth by 2.52 percent in the 1990s.

“…the fall in the growth rate suggests that family planning measures are finally working,” the newspaper added in an editorial Wednesday.

Though final results of the census will be known after 21 months, the early findings show a sharp rise in literacy levels in the country.

An estimated 65.38 percent of the people can now read, write and count numbers, compared to 52.21 percent, 10 years ago.

The gap between male and female literacy has also narrowed with literacy levels of 75.85 and 54.16 percent among men and women respectively.

This is also the first time in five decades that the total number of illiterates has declined since the last census.

Kerala on the southern tip of the sub-continent, remained the country’s most literate province with 90.2 percent literacy. Eastern Bihar state, with 47.53 percent literacy, was at the bottom.

Kerala and Bihar were also at opposite ends of population growth rates with the former recording 9.42 percent and the latter, 28.43 percent, showing dramatically that education holds the key to birth control.

A third cause for cheer was the improvement in the sex ratio from 927 women for every 1,000 men a decade ago, to 933 women to 1,000 men now.

Kerala again had the most favourable sex ratio for women, with 1,058 women per 1000 men. In contrast, the big north Indian states continued to show negative trends with Haryana having only 861 women to every 1000 men.

More than two million enumerators conducted the headcount, visiting some 20 million households across the country over 20 days, starting Feb. 9.

Though top census official J. K. Banthia claimed the exercise was highly successful, there were complaints of irregularities.

“Some complaints are bound to be there given India’s population size, but that does not mean the exercise was meaningless one,” Banthia told reporters while unveiling the findings.

The census chief also dismissed as “baseless”, charges of discrimination on the grounds of religion, caste and gender as alleged by some women’s groups, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and leaders of India’s minority Christian community.

However, census officials who began the exercise by calling on the country’s first citizen, were embarrassed to find that they could not record a vital social fact about President K.R. Narayanan.

Narayanan belongs to one of the lowest social castes in Hindu majority India, but his caste was not listed in the census form.

For over half a century, these socially marginalised castes have been entitled to constitutionally guaranteed quotas in educational institutions, government jobs and legislative bodies.

Organisations representing these castes, officially known as Scheduled Castes, complained that irregularities as in the president’s case, would lead to gross under-estimation of their numbers. The SCs are estimated to make up more than 20 percent of the population.

The census was also criticised by a section of women’s groups for not recognising the children of unwed mothers.

“So many mothers are single nowadays,” said women’s rights activist Ranjana Kumari.

Over the coming months, census officials will be analysing a wealth of information. The data gathered ranges from occupation to migration and fertility patterns, the distance between the home and workplace and the mode of travel.

Questions were also asked for the first time on the nature of physical and mental disabilities.