BS Number Wise: How many Indians? Census suspense beyond population size

Is the country getting older; how is the labour force faring: important questions about demographics await answers

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi rode to power in 2014, and up until 2017 or so, his speeches addressed “savaso crore deshvaasi” (1.25 billion fellow citizens). While inaugurating a road project in March 2019, he said he had “earned the trust of 1.3 billion Indians”. In 2021, he told the Indian Olympics contingent headed to Tokyo they had the “best wishes of 1.35 billion Indians”.

The steady rise in the number for India’s population in his speeches is no anomaly: Modi updates himself to quote a figure that is a bit more correct than before.

Population data, especially for districts and blocks, is important for policymaking. Lawmakers and bureaucrats use population size to determine the share of states and districts in welfare schemes. Infrastructure, investments in electricity, water, health and education are based on the requirements of a region, which can be accurately estimated only if the latest population of that region is known.

The official keeper of national population data, the Registrar General of India (RGI), has delayed its data collection for Census 2021 due to the difficulties posed by the second wave of Covid-19, on the back of the first wave. Covid-19 seems under control—new daily cases are at May 2020 levels as risks from the Omicron variant of the virus remain—but there is no official resumption of counting population yet. Provisional estimates may arrive in 2022, but detailed data might not be available before 2024.

With the absence of this critical data, what do we know about India’s population and demography today?

India’s population ranges between 1.36 billion and 1.38 billion, according to three data sources: the RGI’s projection in 2019, the annually updated projections by the United Nations’ Department of Economic and Social Affairs, and the estimate given in the Aadhaar database.

Not much of a difference among the three, right? But the big changes start surfacing when we begin looking at granular data across age groups and demography. Sample Registration System, a division under the RGI, comes out with the broad age-group wise proportions in the national population. Its latest available data is for 2018.

It shows that in seven years from 2012 to 2018, the share of the working age population in the country rose from 62.6 per cent to 66 per cent. The share of children in the working age population has declined. India's median age has increased from close to 25 years in 2011, to 29 years in 2020.

This suggests that India needed more jobs this decade than ever before. The Periodic Labour Force Survey tells us that the requirement largely remains unmet.

Unemployment rate for all ages in the country stood at 4.8 per cent in 2019-20, while that in the working age population was 5.2 per cent: only slightly higher. However, in the 15-29 age group, it stood at a massive 15 per cent.

New entrants to the working age population, sadly, faced higher joblessness than experienced adults in the last decade. The detailed Census 2021, whenever it will arrive, will tell us a lot about what share of workers in the population are full-time workers and what share is occupied by marginal (part-time) workers.

Further, states from the Hindi belt may have seen a 25-30 per cent growth in their children population. People above 60 years of age, on the other hand, seem to have grown fastest in the urbanised and industrialised Delhi, Gujarat, West Bengal and the Northeast.

Without firm data on these rapid demographic changes, it is questionable if these states--Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan on the one hand, and Gujarat and north eastern states on the other--have fixed their policies and public spending in that direction.

A big factor in deciding the priorities in budgetary spending of central and state governments is the share of rural and urban population. While the former require more direct support, the latter expect facilitation to pull big-ticket investments. If we go by the available projections of population, urbanisation has accelerated in some states.

Nearly seven in ten residents of Kerala are urban now, and the same goes for Goa. The Census defines an area as urban based on a handful of factors, the major one being the lower share of population employed in agricultural activities. While Kerala was already well-urbanised in 2011, the pace of urbanisation till 2021 is fast, and that has changed its developmental priorities. Census helps in narrowing down on these changed parameters to refine policy. No one relies on projections.

The chart shows the top 10 states where the pace of urbanisation is highest, if we consider the projections. Karnataka’s (11th in the list) urban share of population is likely to have increased to 43.6 per cent in 2021 (projected) from 38.6 per cent in 2011 (actual); in Uttarakhand, from 30.6 per cent to 35.1 per cent; and that in Tripura from 26.2 per cent to 37.4 per cent.

These projections show a fast-changing demography of India, with the population bulge moving smoothly through the working age population. But are we adapting to it at that pace? Remains unanswered.

According to UN projections, India’s population will peak at 1.717 billion in 2069 if demographic parameters remain unchanged from current levels. Forget about 2060s and 2070s; even the 2021 projections are available only at the macro level. What about the trickle down of policy and public money at the block, village, or ward level? What could be the cost of this delay there, where the last rupee gets spent? Much to ponder, right?