Demography India Vol. 20, No. 1(1991)

From the Chief Editor’s Desk

MR. A. R. Nanda, the Census Commissioner of India and his colleagues deserve congratulations for the pace with which 1991 Census provisional results were released. The Census count was completed on 5th March 1991 and the provisional results were announced on 25th March 1991. This speaks of the level of planning and efforts which must have gone into this exercise. The volume of work could be judged by the fact that 8000 tonnes of paper was used to print the schedules and about 1.7 million individuals were involved in collecting the information. India can easily feel proud of having the largest census operation of the world and an efficient one.

The 1991 Census results are, however, not encouraging. First of all, the decline in annual growth rate is very moderate and much below expectation—from 2.22 during 1971-81 to 2.11 during 1981 -91. If the expected correction due to post-enumeration check is considered, perhaps the final population figure would be around 846 million, pushing the growth rate to 2.14. This is shocking for policy makers and programme managers who are responsible for country's development and managing Family Welfare Programme for arresting population growth. It would be, however, rather hasty to conclude that F.W. Programme has totally failed. The impact of F.W. Programme, which has been fairly well in many states, has been marginalized mainly by six major states, namely, U.P., Bihar, M.P., Maharashtra, West Bengal and A.P. comprising 60 percent of the country's total population.

From the women's perspective also, the Census results are equally discouraging. The sex ratio has again taken a dip from 934 in 1981 to 929 in 1991. It appears that the reversal of the declining trend in sex ratio during 1971-81 was only momentary and during 1981-91 a larger number of women as compared to men have lost their 1 ife because of various reasons including lack of their accessibility to health care and due to negligence, often purposively, by their family members. This is particularly true for Bihar where the sex ratio has dropped by 34 points from 946 in 1981 to 912 in 1991.1 hope serious attempt will be made first to confirm that the drop is real and then to understand reasons for such unwanted change.

Analysis of literacy data from 1991 Census is somewhat encouraging. The female literacy rate based on population aged 7 years or more has increased from 29.8 per cent in 1981 to 39.4 in 1991. A comparison with the male literacy shows that the percent increase is higher among the females (32.2 per cent) than among males (13.3 per cent).

An analysis of labour force statistics of 1991 Census shows that despite good intentions of Mr. Nanda to improve the data collection on female labour force, the Census has again failed in capturing women's contribution to the national economy. According to 1991 Census, only 22.7 per cent of women were counted as worker: 16.4 per cent as main and 6.3 as marginal workers. The corresponding figures for 1981 Census were 19.8, 14.0 and 5.8. Between 1981 and 1991 Census the increase is only 2.9 (3.9 rural and 1.4 urban) per cent points. This is obviously because the of the continued use of the same questions which have persistently failed in the past Census to capture women's participation in labour force. This also shows that the few probes or instructions in the interviewer's manual which were added in the 1991 Census were not sufficient to elicit the truth. This points to the fact that unless the Census takes a corrective measure by substantially modifying the questions or adding a few more focussed probes, women's economic contribution and their participation in labour force will remain invisible.

Considering the importance of the Census results, this issue of Demography India is exclusively devoted to some of the observations made from available Census results. I am sure soon many more papers providing new insight on the Indian population will be written. Papers based on detailed analysis of 1991 Census results, particularly on labour force, urbanisation and gender issues, are invited for future issues of Demography India.

M. E. Khan
Chief Editor, Demography India