People's Democracy

        Stop Fanning Communalism: AIDWA

AIDWA issued the following statement on September 8:

THE All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) condemns the communal statements made by BJP leaders following the release of Census Data on population. It is significant that the BJP president has maintained a deafening silence on declining sex ratios while showing his communal bias. The AIDWA requests the census authorities to present their data in a less irrational and misleading manner. They omitted to mention that the 2001 data includes the population of Jammu and Kashmir which was not counted in the 1991 data. This accounts substantially for the growth in the Muslim population. Secondly, with regard to the rate of increase or population growth in percentage terms:  the fact is that there is a decline in the rate at which population growth has taken place in India, and, significantly, the fall in the rate of increase is higher amongst Muslims than amongst other religious communities. This apart, it is wrong to release religion-based data without correlating it with determining features of demographic patterns such as infant mortality rates, income, literacy, occupation etc. This gives a totally misleading picture that population growth rate is linked to religious affiliation.

There are no monolithic groups like Hindus or Muslims as far as analysis of population growth rates are concerned.  According to National Family Health Surveys (NFHS), the demarcating factors are not religion or caste but literacy, income, region and work status. Thus for example women who have completed High School regardless of religion or caste have a total fertility rate (TFR) of 2.0 compared to unlettered women who have a TFR rate 3.5. Similarly there is a difference between rural and urban fertility rates. Within urban areas the highest TFR is among women living in urban slums which is 4. Muslim women, Scheduled Caste women and Scheduled Tribes women have the highest rates of illiteracy, majority of them live below poverty line and infant mortality rate are very high. Thus fertility rates among women of these sections are on the higher side.

Another completely misleading picture given is that of sex ratios. To compare a monolithic category like ‘Hindus’ favourably to ‘Sikhs’ and ‘Jains’ as far as declining sex ratios are concerned makes the mockery of the reality that the sharpest decline is among higher income groups of Hindus. In Haryana the sex ratio among the lowest income group is 1567 and in the higher income group just 541. In other words the well off abort female fetuses leading to dangerous sex ratio decline but restricts family size.

The census date if analysed properly provides opportunity to policy makers to address social, economic and gender imbalances. It is unfortunate that it should be misused for communal purposes. (INN)