The two important sources of demographic data, namely, vital registration and the census, have limited utility for a study of fertility in India.

Though the system of registration of births and deaths is quite old in India, the reporting is, by and large, is incomplete and inaccurate. Some of the reasons for this state of affairs are the illiteracy and ignorance of the masses, the apathy and lack of motivation on the part of people to register vital events, the inadequacy of the registration machinery and a lack of interest on the part of the registration personnel.

The ancillary information, which ought to be collected along with the registration of vital events, is also many times not available.

Although the extent of under-enumeration in India is not exactly known, it is possible to have some idea of it from the special surveys undertaken to estimate the under-registration of births and deaths in India.

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Pilot surveys conducted in the States of West Bengal and Madras in 1967 at the instance of the Registrar-General of India found that 39 per cent of the births and 3 per cent of the deaths in West Bengal were not registered: in Madras, these percentages were 37 and 27 for births and deaths respectively.

In a demographic study of six urbanizing villages around Delhi carried out in 1965, it was observed that 19 per cent of the births and 45 per cent of the deaths were not reported by the village chowkidars.

There are, however, some rare instances where the coverage and quality of vital registration is fairly satisfactory; for example, in Greater Bombay.

The question of the number of children ever born generally asked in a census operation is useful for computing the average family size. Indian censuses, however, have not so far provided information on this point on a nation-wide basis.

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Any attempt at collecting data on fertility through a census has so far been frustrating. As early as in 1911, Marten, the Superintendent of Census Operations of the Central Provinces and Berar, made an attempt to obtain some information on “the size and sex constitution of the family in the Central Provinces, and relative fecundity in different castes and different parts in the Central Provinces.”

This information, however, suffered from several inadequacies. The relevant questions were asked from each adult married man, instead of from each married woman. The fact whether a man had one wife or more was also not taken into account.

There was, therefore, no way to relate the number of live births to women, which is the most meaningful way of studying fertility. No information was collected on the age of the parents, which is of crucial importance in any study of fertility.

In the 1921 census, information on the size and sex composition of families and on fertility in married life was collected from Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, the Central Provinces, the Punjab, and from Baroda and Travancore States.

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It has been pointed out that the collection of data on “the more intimate aspects of life” met with several difficulties. No uniformity was maintained in the method adopted for collecting data on these items in different States.

In Baroda and Travancore States, this information was collected from wives by a specially appointed staff. “In Bengal, the investigation was made by intelligent persons, who were interested in the subject; and the number of returns tabulated was 34,686, the schedules relating chiefly to the middle section of the population.”

In Bihar and Orissa, the investigation was conducted through medical officers. Any attempt at obtaining information on even the duration of marriage was futile because of the gross ignorance of persons regarding the concept of age or of the passage of time in years.

In spite of the difficulties involved in such operations, an attempt was made in the 1931 census to collect statistics on such aspects relating to fertility as age at marriage, sex composition and the size of the family.

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Information on these points was collected from all sections society from each part of India, except the United Provinces, which declined to collect this information.

Data were collected through various types of agencies, mainly educational and medical and, wherever possible, information was collected through women.

The quality of data varied from State to State. In his review of the Indian Fertility Enquiry, 1931 Census, Ghosh arrived at two conditions; (1) the data were badly collected and suffered from many inadequacies, lack of uniformity and representatives; (2) the data were not handled efficiently.

Some findings of this enquiry were rather peculiar and difficult to believe. For instance, it was found that the average number of children born to women, who were more than 20 years old when they got married, was greater than to those who had got married earlier.

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In the 1951 census, the item referring to fertility (called “maternity data”) was kept optional, and only three States Madhya Pradesh, Travancore Cochin and Bihar exercised this option and collected statistics on child birth, child survival and other maternity data.

The questions that were framed to obtain data, however, were not uniform. The data collected from Bihar suffered from unidentified errors which rendered them significantly under-enumerated.

When a sample census of births and deaths was conducted in India during 1952-53, the data were riddled with errors in age reporting. The maternity data, collected in the 1951 census in Bihar, were not analysed, while the information collected from Madhya Pradesh was found to suffer from a great deal of under-reporting.

It was also observed that, despite clear instructions to enter “zero” on the census slip wherever the woman was childless, the 1951 maternity data were found to suffer from the zero error.

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After the 1961 census, post-census fertility surveys, usually covering one per cent of the rural blocks and two per cent of the urban blocks, were conducted in various States in India.

So far, result from only five States Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Gujarat, Kerala and Orissa have been made available. It appears that the non-availability of reports from other States is due to difficulties arising out of collecting the data. The published reports indicate under-reporting.

Though no attempt was made in the 1961 census to collect data on fertility along with census enumeration, some data on current fertility were collected in the 1971 census, and information was gathered on child births in the household during the reference period of 12 months.

But no information on the number of children ever born was collected. These data on child births during a specific reference period may not suffer from deficiencies due to recall lapse, and therefore may be expected to provide valuable information on current fertility on an all-India basis as well as for different States.

In the 1981 census, information on fertility was collected on a sample basis. Of the total enumeration blocks in the country, a 20 per cent sample was selected on the basis of systematic sampling and in these sample blocks questions relating to fertility were canvassed.

All ever-married women were asked questions on: (a) Age at marriage, (b) Number of children surviving at present, (c) Number of children ever born alive. Currently married women were asked whether and child was born alive during the last one year.

This brief review of the attempts at collecting data on fertility through the census operations indicates that till the 1981 census no attempt was made to collect information on the number of children ever born as a measure of fertility.

From this, it may be concluded that the censuses in India have little direct use as sources of fertility data till the findings of the 1981 census become available.

Hence, it becomes necessary to depend on the fragmentary data supplied by the National Sample Surveys, the Sample Registration Scheme, and other ad hoc surveys.

The National Sample Survey (NSS) started collecting information on fertility and mortality in India on a comprehensive scale in the fourteenth round (July 1958-June 1959); in some rounds it collected data on various socio-economic characteristics in order to examine their association with fertility. The NSS can thus provide information on the level of fertility and differential fertility.

The Sample Registration Scheme (SRS), introduced in the country for the improvement and upgrading of the registration of births and deaths, provides estimates of births and deaths with a fairly reliable degree of accuracy, and the information thus collected gives us some idea of the level of fertility in India as well as in the various States in the country.

Various ad hoc surveys conducted at different points of time and at different places also provide useful information for the study of various aspects of fertility in India.

Though these surveys differ in their location, their period of reference as well as in the methodology of analysis adopted, the data gathered through them are useful for an understanding of fertility patterns in the country, especially in the study of differential fertility in India.