Deaths and statistics: The case of the SRS.

India accounts for roughly 17% of the deaths worldwide but doesn’t have a system that can accurately count the number of deaths.

The Civil Registration System (CRS) and the Sample Registration System (SRS) measure mortality, both with their limitations.

History:
- India’s Civil Registration System (CRS) has a long history dating back to the mid-nineteenth century.
- A Central birth, Death, and Marriages Registration Bill were passed in 1886 to allow for consensual registration across British India.
Purpose:
- Civil registration is the system by which a government records the important events of its citizens and residents.
- The CRS is a record of birth, death and stillbirth at the place of occurrence.
Administration:
- The CRS is run by the Registrar General of India and is linked with the National Population Register (NPR).

History:
- Initiated on a pilot basis by the Registrar General of India in a few states in 1964-65, it became fully operational during 1969-70.
Aims and objectives:
- The SRS is a large-scale demographic survey for providing reliable annual estimates of Infant mortality rate, birth rate, death rate and other fertility and mortality indicators at the national and sub-national levels.

The CRS showed that India had an estimated 8.2 lakh excess deaths in 2020.
- Excess deaths were calculated as the difference between the registered deaths in 2020 and the average number of deaths registered in 2018 and 2019.
States such as Bihar, Maharashtra and West Bengal had a high burden of excess mortality.

The report states that the death rate was 6.0 per 1,000 in 2020.
- In a year affected by the pandemic, the estimated death rate remained unchanged from 6.0 in 2019.
The Infant Mortality Rate has declined by 2 points to 28 per 1,000 live births in 2020 from 30 per 1,000 live births in 2019. The annual rate of decline is 6.7 per cent. The rural-urban difference has been reduced to 12 points.

The Registrar General of India was founded in 1961 under the Ministry of Home Affairs.
It arranges, conducts and analyses the results of the demographic surveys of India, including the Census of India and Linguistic Survey of India.

The Registration of Births and Death Act (RBD Act) was enacted in 1969 to promote uniformity and comparability in the registration of births and deaths across the country and the compilation of vital statistics based thereon.
The registration of births and deaths in the country is done by the functionaries appointed by the state governments.
The directorates of Census Operations are the subordinate offices of the Office of the Registrar General, and these offices are responsible for monitoring the working of the Act in their concerned state and Union Territory.

Content Source: The Hindu