A Call For Improving Civil Registration Systems

Context: India needs to swiftly assign resources and give high priority to improving data on births and deaths.

Case of excess deaths during the pandemic period

• A working paper for the Centre for Global Development: Co-authored by former Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian concludes that excess deaths during the pandemic period could be as high as 49 lakhs in India as against the 4.14 lakh reported in government data.
• Based on Civil Registration System (CRS), data for many States showed that the death toll was several times higher than the official death toll due to COVID-19.

Issues in our Civil Registration Systems

• Inadequate: Institutional capacity: Only eleven States register more than 90% of deaths. Uttar Pradesh registered 63% of the deaths, and Bihar registered only 51.6%, according to the 2019 report of the Registrar General, India.
• Opaque practices and data gap: Despite having technologies that enable States to release data on number of deaths registered on a monthly, weekly or daily basis, in some States, researchers had to use the Right to Information law to obtain data on the number of deaths registered.
  • Dissemination of the data is neglected to such an extent that the Health Departments, including the States where they are in charge of the system, are generally not aware of this data.
• Institutional issues:
  • While the Registrar General, India, is the head of the national organisation tasked with the registration of births and deaths, the actual work is carried out by the State and Union Territory (UT) administrations.
  • This led to a multiplicity of agencies (State/Central organisations, health department, Police, local bodies etc.), poor coordination and continuing traditional bureaucratic practice of functioning within departmental silos.

Way forward: Strengthening the system

• Accord high priority to strengthening civil registration and generation of vital statistics: The top level of the leadership at the Central and State governments must announce a time-bound commitment to achieve 100% registration of deaths in the country.
• Meet the quality standards: Vital Statistics Reports that the government is required to publish are expected to meet a standard that is set by the UN Statistics Division, which seeks to ensure that all national reports are produced in an internationally comparable manner.