Haryana seems to have reversed its practice of discriminating against its unborn daughters. The Sex Ratio at Birth (SRB) for the state has been more than 900 for the last six years. Contrast this with the state’s history. The Child Sex Ratio (CSR) in the state was 819 in 2001…

For the longest time, I have been mildly embarrassed by India’s large population. Maybe this feeling came from watching too many family planning advertisements while growing up in 70s and 80s. The advertisements left an impression that a large and growing population was something to be ashamed about. Perhaps the…

Mahatma Gandhi said, “India does not live in its towns but in its villages.” He said this nearly a hundred years ago and it seems to be true even today if you look at the last census data. But the picture changes quite a bit when you dig deeper. Many…

All human beings are equal. This is the foundational principle of democracy, right? Unfortunately, it isn’t so in practice and what is more, there are no easy fixes. I am not talking about inequalities such as being born in a poor household and having no access to opportunity. I am…

How long would an Indian born today expect to live? How many Indians die every year? What are the leading causes of death in the country? The Covid-19 pandemic has focused our attention on death and I thought this would be a good time to answer these questions. This post…

Ms. Smriti Irani recently claimed that India has improved its Sex Ratio at Birth (SRB) from 918 in 2014–15 to 931 in 2018–19. Haryana, which has had the worst SRB, made striking improvements. This report suggests that the SRB in the state had gone up from low 800s to 923…

There are fewer females in India as compared to the rest of the world. A brief discussion of the causes. I started this series on population in India with some basics. One of the charts in that piece was on the number of females per thousand males. The chart shows…

Migration and demographic change are crucial to understanding the politics in Assam. In my last post in this series on population in India, I showed that although the natual growth rates of Muslim population is higher than that of non Muslim population, there is nothing inherent in Islam that should…

This is the fifth post in a series on population in India. The first four posts can be found here, here, here and here. Each post can be read independently. Recently, a Bhartiya Janta Party leader asked Hindu women to have more children. Possibly, he was trying to exploit a…

How many people in India migrate in search of work? Who are they? Where do they come from and where do they go? In my last blog in this series on population in India, I looked at the difference in fertility rates across states, and made the easy prediction that…

This post is the third in a series on population in India. Each of them can be read independently. In the first part of this series, we looked at the growth since independece, the sex ratio and the fertility rate. In the second part we explained why even though the…

This is the second post in our series “Everything you wanted to know about population in India (but were too lazy to Google).” The first part on basics can be found here. The Prime Minister of India, in his recent Independence Day speech talked about ‘population explosion’. But, the government’s…

This is the second post in our series “Everything you wanted to know about population in India (but were too lazy to Google).” The first part on basics can be found here. The Prime Minister of India, in his recent Independence Day speech talked about ‘population explosion’. But, the government’s…

This is the first part of our series, “Everything you wanted to know about population in India (but were too lazy to Google)”. The second post is “Are Acche din of population growth already here”. Is India overpopulated? Is the sex ratio in the country dangerously low? Is India a…