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New
Delhi, 20 November 2005
Mohan
Guruswamy puts into perspective the Sangh Parivar's fears of the
growth of the Muslim population in India. He contends that if the
present trends continue then the population growth of all groups in
India will cease by about the end of this century. With present
trends continuing it will take the Muslim population 247 years to
catch up with Hindus in terms of numbers! At the macro level the
populations of Russia, Europe, Japan and the more developed
economies are actually contracting and ageing. In contrast, by 2020,
India will have more than 270
million people in the 1535 age segments. According to MG,
"If savings rates hold and with productive potential at its
peak, we will have a great window of opportunity to make it as a
developed and prosperous economy by 2050 if we are able to educate
and empower the masses. Such a demographic constellation will never
appear again. It's just too bad our leaders are pre-occupied with
their individual constellations, and not the nations."
While speaking at the release of
"Religious Demography of India" brought out by the Centre
for Policy Studies, a RSS affiliated think-tank based in Chennai,
RSS Sarsanghchalak KS Sudarshan, exhorted Hindus to have larger
families (teen se kam nahi, aap jitna jyaada kar sakein utna acha!).
The immediate provocation for this
somewhat drastic remedy to what he obviously considers a serious
national problem is the rates of population growth of Muslims and
Christians. That Muslims are growing at a faster rate than Hindus in
independent India is well known. It has been so since 1951. In the
decade 1951-61 Muslims grew at 24.9% while Hindus grew at 18.6%. In
1991-2001 the growth rate of Muslims after adjusting for the
exclusion of Assam and J&K in the 1981 and 1991 Census's was
29.3%, while that of Hindus was 20.0%. Not surprisingly the BJP and
its like-minded allies have tried to stoke fears about Hindus being
swamped by Muslims. That of course is a ridiculous notion for let
alone present trends continuing, population growth of all groups in
India will cease about the end of this century. It has been
calculated that even if present trends continued it would take 247
years for Indian Muslims to catch up with Hindus in terms of
numbers. Its not as if the RSS is not capable of getting its math
right, but logic is not the issue.
To support its distorted inferences
the RSS has for a start considerably enlarged India. This one
sentence in the preface of the book is a dead giveaway: "When
we look at the data for the whole of India, including the Indian
Union, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the new data only confirms the
distinct possibility that Muslims and Christians together shall
become the majority in the Indian region early in the second half of
the twenty first century". So their India now includes Pakistan
and Bangladesh? Why not Nepal then? And even Sri Lanka?
The Chairman of the All-India
Muslim Personal Law Board, Maulana Rabey Hasni Nadwi on the other
hand had categorically stated, "There is no room for family
planning in Islam." He obviously is not inspired by the fact
that in most proclaimed Islamic republics like Iran, Indonesia,
Egypt, Pakistan and Bangladesh the governments actively encourage
family planning.
Most demographers project that
India's population growth will taper off around 2060. But the growth
of population in the bimaru belt will continue till 2091.
This rather appropriate acronym BIMARU stands for Bihar,
Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. The Muslim growth will
also level off about then, by which time they will constitute a good
18.8% of India. Given its political implications this could be a
matter of concern in some quarters. But what should equally be a
matter of concern is the consequent implication that if the bimaru
population keeps growing till near the end of the century, then the
proportionate populations of other regions will actually be
contracting. This may have even graver political consequences.
This does not seem to concern the
Sangh Parivar, which seems only perturbed about Muslim fecundity. A
decade after liberalisation not much has changed in India. About a
third of our billion plus population lives below the poverty line.
And mind you the Indian poverty line, because of its emphasis on
daily caloric intake is really the hunger line and not a poverty
line that takes into account basic human needs. The GDP of India in
20034 was Rs. 2760025 crores, growing from Rs. 9547 crores in
195051. This phenomenal growth also saw the share of Agriculture
decline from 55.8% to 27.3%, while Industry grew from 15.2% to 24.6%
and Services grew from 29.0% to 48.2%, making it seem that India is
shaping up like a post industrial society without having really
industrialized!
We know from experience that
redistribution policies do not work well in practice. In 1994,
almost a full quarter century after Garibi Hatao became the
leitmotif of our economic policies, the Gini coefficient, which is
the measure of income inequality, remained almost the same as in
1971 at 0.345. In 2003 the Gini has deteriorated to 0.378. The urban
and rural inequality has also worsened. Worse, the inequality
between the regions is alarming. There is a very clear divide
apparent now in India with the Hindi speaking and eastern region
quite visibly left behind. The bimaru population is also
growing at a much faster pace. The growth of population of the four
southern states is less than half that of the bimaru states.
True, the populations of Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat and Maharashtra
are also growing at rates comparable with the bimaru four,
but their growth in per capita income is comparable with that of the
southern four. Don't jump to conclusions that if the population
growth were to have slowed down, their per capita income growths
could have been quite spectacular? On the face of it that may appear
so, but it doesn't work that way.
At a macro-level, both, China and
India have had a phenomenal expansion of populations combined with
economic growth. Quite clearly population growth is not necessarily
a brake on economic growth. On the other hand there is much to
suggest that population growth contributes much to economic growth.
The critical factor here is the dependency ratio, which is the ratio
of dependent people aged 014 and 65plus against productive people
in the 1564 years age group. The lower the dependency ratio the
better. China currently has a more favourable dependency ratio of
450/1000 while that of India is closer to 650/1000. It is only in
about 2020 that the Indian dependency ratio becomes the lowest in
Asia, giving it the first real demographic opportunity to better the
performance of today's high fliers. Japan now is in the most
difficult stage of its demographic transition. By 2020, the biggest
segments of Japanese population will be in the above 65 years age
group, with close to 15 million persons in just the above 80 age
group making it the largest segment. To compound matters Japan's
population will begin contracting.
Much of Europe will face similar
problems. By 2050 Russia will contract from 145 million now to about
90 million, whereas Italy will shrink to less than 40 million from
58 million now. It seems that among the major developed economies,
only the USA will continue to have favorable demographics and
economic growth. But by then the USA will be a nation where the
Hispanics, Blacks and Asians will constitute the overwhelming
majority, which might even make it a better country? In 2020 India
will have more than 270 million people in the 1535 age segments,
when productivity and economic contribution is the highest. If
savings rates hold and with productive potential at its peak in 2020
and we will have a great window of opportunity to make it as a
developed and prosperous economy by 2050 if we are able to educate
and empower the masses. Such a demographic constellation will never
appear again. It's just too bad our leaders are pre-occupied with
their individual constellations, and not the nations.
There are other trends, some
disquieting, also visible now. The foremost of these is the sharp
increase in the numbers of Agricultural labourers. This is the
classification reserved for "the poorest of the poor."
Their numbers had risen to 106.8 million in 2001 posting a decadal
growth of 43.16%; almost double the 23.51% of the previous decade.
This is a severe indictment of the policies pursued in the decade
after the so-called liberalisation. During this period the entire
political spectrum enjoyed power and each formation equally
vigorously endorsed the so-called liberalisation. Naturally we will
see no fingers pointed inwards. But not all the RSS's concerns are
unfounded.
If economic conditions determine
population growth, we must wonder as to why the growth of the SC and
ST segments has remained below the Muslim growth trend? As opposed
to the 29.3% decadal growth between 19912001 of Muslims, the
decadal growth rate of SC's and ST's was 20.55% and 24.45%
respectively. The household annual incomes as well as per capita
incomes of the SC and ST groups are lower than that of Muslims.
Muslims in turn are generally poorer than caste Hindus. Quite
clearly there are segmental attitudes impacting upon population
growth. Literacy levels of both rural and urban Muslims are lower
than Hindus, but not by very much. Perhaps what is more significant
is that as a percentage, more than twice as many uneducated Hindu
women 44% to 18% are employed than similarly
disadvantaged Muslim women. The economic plight of rural Muslims is
not very dissimilar to that of rural Hindus. As a percentage more
rural Hindu households (51.2%) are landless than rural Muslim
households (39.5%). But when it comes to larger holdings of over one
hectare, the incidence of Muslims households with land is over twice
that of Hindus. For instance in the 12 ha segment, 11.7% of rural
Muslim households fall into this category while it is only 6% for
Hindus. Even so the distribution of rural Muslims and Hindus by
household monthly per capita expenditure remains about the same.
It is only in the urban areas that
the Muslims fare really poorly. About 40% of Muslim households have
a per capita expenditure of less than Rs.425 per month. At the upper
end 17.1% of Hindu households have per capita expenditure of over
Rs.1120 per month as opposed to 5.8% for Muslims.
Finally here's something that
should worry the Sangh Parivar no end. The proportion of caste
Hindu's has been steadily dropping since 1961 when it was 61.97%. It
is 56.05% now.
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