Demographic Deeds & Destinies
Amartya Sen made the “Kerala model” of social development world-famous.
While he was doing so through much of the 1980s and the early 1990s,
the majority view in this country was that Kerala is unique and that
the rest of the country would have to wait for decades to achieve Kerala
levels of female literacy and, consequently, birth rates. But by the
mid-1990s, it had become clear that Tamil Nadu had disproved this hypothesis.
At significantly lower levels of female literacy, Tamil Nadu reached
the replacement level of fertility of 2.1 by the mid-1990s, following
the example of Kerala which had done so in 1988. The replacement level
of fertility (2.1 and not 2 to account for bachelors, spinsters and
childless couples in any population) is a crucial transition point,
a generation or two after which population growth stabilises.
When Tamil Nadu emulated Kerala, pundits said that Tamil Nadu is a special
case. Then, all of a sudden around 1999, data showed that Andhra Pradesh
had emerged out of nowhere to follow Kerala and Tamil Nadu.. What is
remarkable about Andhra Pradesh is that it is one of the most educationally
backward states. However, it has marched ahead in population control.
This is largely on account of a very widespread use of terminal methods,
as in Tamil Nadu but on a larger scale. In addition, there might well
have been a positive spillover from NTR’s Rs 2 a kg rice scheme and
different schemes for empowerment of women.
Now, we have a few more pleasant surprises. In terms of birth rates
in 2001 as reported through the Sample Registration System, Maharashtra
has bettered Andhra Pradesh’s record and Punjab, West Bengal, Uttaranchal,
Delhi and Himachal Pradesh are all knocking on the door of the replacement
level of fertility. This is most unexpected but the gains have to be
consolidated. Data for 2002 will be available by the end of the month
and it will, in all probability, confirm these trends.
Karnataka, Orissa and Gujarat form a third group of states who would
probably reach replacement levels of fertility by the end of this decade.
The counter-intuitive laggard performance of Gujarat and Karnataka must
cause worry in these otherwise well-managed and economically dynamic
states. Death rates are the highest in Orissa. When mortality rates
fall and when nutritional standards improve in Orissa as they must,
fertility rates may, in fact, first shoot up before falling. Then we
have Assam, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and ,somewhat surprisingly, Haryana
where birth rates are still uncomfortably high but where the prospects
of replacement levels of fertility being reached sometime in the middle
of the next decade are very bright.
Finally, as things stand today given the sheer size of the population,
its very young age structure and reproductive behaviour, Bihar, Madhya
Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh are most unlikely to reach replacement
levels of fertility even by the middle of this century, with the transition
for Bihar and Uttar Pradesh moving into the next century. Today, the
BIMARU states account for 36% of the country’s population. By the middle
of the century when India will indisputably be the world’s most populous
country, these four states will account for over half of the country’s
population.
However, the 1990s saw remarkable increases in female literacy in both
Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan and this, coupled with the fact that the
compound annual growth rate in gross state domestic product GSDP) in
both these states has been around 5.5% per annum during the 1990s, puts
them on a different footing than Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Politics too
in MP and Rajasthan is development-oriented. Although there are a few
pockets of fertility declines in Bihar and UP, the overall scenario
in this duo-where both national parties are facing extinction– is depressing
enough to consider a democratic “pre-emptive strike” to bring about
a “system change”, since a “regime change” will just not suffice.
