Opinion Something to cheer about

How the Bimaru states helped slam the brakes on population growth?

April 5, 2011 12:36 AM IST First published on: Apr 5, 2011 at 12:36 AM IST

In 1911,J. Charles Molony,superintendent of census,Madras,wrote: The Village Officer,source of all Indian information,is the recorder of his village,and it well may be that amid the toils of keeping accounts and collecting manuals,he pays scant heed to what he and his friends consider the idle curiosity of an eccentric sarkar. A century later,at a village in Mewat,Haryana,Jamaluddin thought so too. So when the census enumerator came,Jamaluddin answered questions about his wives and their children with a perpetually befuddled smile on his lips. Just why do you want to know? he kept asking. But the eccentric sarkar kept counting its people from 252 million in 1911 to,as the provisional census figures now tell us,1.2 billion people. Thats 1,21,01,93,422. Just to satisfy that idle curiosity,lets look at what that number says about our country.

The 1961 census reported that India had a population of 439 million,a number that beat all predictions then: the Central Statistical Organisation had estimated a population of 431 million and the Planning Commission was way off the mark at 408 million. An increase of 78 million over the previous decade was disturbing. Fifty years later,that number of 439 million seems a fraction the population in the whole of India in 1961 fits into present-day UP,Maharashtra,Bihar and West Bengal,which,according to the 2011 provisional census,have a combined population of 505 million.

Indias 1.2 billion people make up 17.5 per cent of the worlds population. A big number,but for the first time since 1961,theres something to cheer about in Indias population story. At a growth rate of 17.64 per cent over the population reported in 2001,this is the slowest the country has grown since Independence down 3.9 percentage points over the 21.54 per cent growth rate recorded in 1991-2001. But thats not good enough to stop India from overtaking China,which is growing at a much lower 5.43 per cent,by 2030. Only Pakistan (24.78 per cent) and Nigeria (26.84 per cent) are growing at a rate faster than India.

The drop in growth rate is one of the big positives that this census has thrown up. But it was made possible by the fact that for the first time,Rajasthan,Uttar Pradesh,Uttarakhand,Bihar,Jharkhand,Madhya Pradesh,Chhattisgarh and Orissa what are known in administrative parlance as the Empowered Action Group (EAG) states or what Ashish Bose calls Bimaru states plus Orissa registered a significant fall in the growth rate of population,after years of remaining stagnant at rates above the national average.

The provisional census report now says that between 1951 and 2001,the EAG states have hosted between 43 and 46 per cent of Indias population. Which is why,a dip of 4 percentage points in the growth rate of these states from 24.99 per cent in 1991-2001 to 20.92 per cent in 2001-11 helped pulled down the countrys decadal growth rate. This decade was the first time that both EAG states and the rest of India registered significant drop in decadal growth rates EAG states by 4.01 percentage points and non-EAG states by 3.91 percentage points.

This decade also marked the spread of the phenomenon of low growth beyond the four southern states,a trend that had begun to show in 1991-2001. Besides the big four southern states,Himachal Pradesh,Punjab,West Bengal,Orissa and Maharashtra have registered a growth rate between 11 and 16 per cent in 2001-11 over the previous decade (below the national average of 17.64 per cent).

But the provisional data shows why the population clock may have slowed but is still ticking away at a rate that will make it difficult for India to achieve a stable population anytime soon. India is at what experts call Stage 3 of population growth,a stage at which birth rates fall but population continues to grow because of a significant number of people in the reproductive age group,a result of the high fertility of the previous generations.

What is of concern is that during 2001-11,the decadal growth rates in Bihar,Chhattisgarh,Jharkhand,Rajasthan,Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh are still above 20 per cent. The report says that is a level where Kerala and Tamil Nadu were 40 years ago thatll take a lot of catching up to do. Kerala now has a decadal growth rate of 4.9 per cent,the second lowest in the country after Nagaland (-0.47 per cent).

Indias National Population Policy of 2000 says that the long-term objective is to achieve a stable population one with low birth and death rates and high socio-economic development by 2045. But even with the significant fall in rate of population growth that this census recorded,that could be a stiff target.

uma.vishnu@expressindia.com