Religious growth rates!

by The Opti Mystic

4 comments

1 Sivani { 09.07.04 at 5:55 pm }

Something that always gets me is the quick and easy interpretation news reports give to numbers. The rediff report by implication seems to focus exclusively on birth rate as an indication of population growth numbers.
I would love to see figures by population group of the number of people who have moved abroad, whether as emigrants or on “temporary” work permits.
The majority of people in this category would be in prime child-bearing age (in my experience) - I wonder how many of those have responded to the census?
My experience, which is admittedly limited, personal and faulty, having studied at one of the top engineering schools in America, and one of the most diverse, and now working at one of the top engineering companies in the world, relatively diverse in today’s climate, is that the majority of Indians studying, living and working here are Hindu, with a much smaller Muslim contingent.
Consider that every worker, student and permanent resident abroad is one fewer counted (presuming they did not respond to the census.) At least half of those are likely to be married with their spouses living with them - a further tally lost. Add all their children, and the numbers “missing” from the tally become truly significant.
I won’t go so far as to say that the conclusions drawn in the rediff article are necessarily wrong; however, it does seem to have been written without considering all angles.

2 The Opti Mystic { 09.07.04 at 6:25 pm }

Thanks for visiting and commenting here.

Well… while your contention is valid, it is a drawback of the census process… and at that, not necessarily that of the Indian census process. Moreover, I am sure that a census is done knowing fully well that it will not capture all the data there is to capture, since that is statistically, logistically and logically impossible to achieve, especially in a country like India where factors like accessibility form a major stumbling block. In fact, census data is never 100% accurate, even for the ‘richer and advanced’ countries.

Just one more thing… I don’t think its the rediff article that has made the claims. It is the Census bureau that has come out with a detailed analysis of the data they had gathered as a part of the 2001 census. rediff is just reporting the findings.

3 Sivani { 09.07.04 at 8:32 pm }

Hmm. Re-reading the report I see that most of my inferences were drawn directly from the large headline stating “Muslims multiplying at high rate: Census”
Which influenced my entire reading of the piece, and would not be unreasonable to suspect that it would have influenced that of others as well.

You are correct, the rest of the report is a pretty straight-forward reporting of the numbers, apart from the first couple of paragraphs designed to draw the comparison between the Hindu and Muslim communities.

Regarding the census process: I have no quarrels with the Indian census process versus those in other “western” countries. Doubtlessly India faces huge obstacles in accurate information gathering, and most astute observers will use the data to monitor trends rather than obsess over minutiae of precise numbers.

Returning to the piece: I maintain that most readers would have walked away with a very particular impression made by the headline, and prominently (if factually) reinforced by the first two paras. And this was done for a particular effect, one which might be particularly unhelpful in regions where tensions are high.

But then, heaven forbid we advocate responsible journalism, anywhere in the world :(

As an intellectual exercise, think of alternative headlines to the piece that might be as eye-catching and factually correct, but stated in a less judgmental (IMHO) manner.

I repeat, for personal interest sake: “I would love to see figures by population group of the number of people who have moved abroad, whether as emigrants or on “temporary” work permits.”

4 The Opti Mystic { 09.07.04 at 11:21 pm }

Sivani, I did take exception to the way these news items were branded by rediff. It was clearly meant purely to snare unsuspecting readers in to read their articles. Evidently, resposible journalism is almost an oxymoron in these times!

I was not trying to show differences between western and Indian approaches to census. I was merely trying to state that a census can never be an absolutely accurate reflection of the number of people in the country.