Introduction

This paper is an empirical study of village birth records in India, using data from a village survey conducted under the Project on Agrarian Relations in India (PARI) by the Foundation for Agrarian Studies as a point of reference for comparison.

Birth records are a useful starting point in a study of the overall administrative records of a village. The National Statistical Commission of India states that the Civil Registration System (CRS) has the potential to provide estimates of vital rates at the district level and below, and that these can form the basis for planning health and family welfare programmes at the local level as required by the 73rd and 74th Amendments to the Constitution.¹ However, the Civil Registration System suffers from problems of poor coverage and quality.² In fact, the Sample Registration Survey and the National Family Health Survey have shown up the low coverage of the Civil Registration System, especially in rural areas.

Subsequently, a High Level Expert Committee on Basic Statistics for Local Level Development³ was set up to examine the available village-level databases. With regard to birth records at the village level, the Committee found that the registers maintained by Anganwadi workers provide records of better quality than the birth registers of the Civil Registration System.

Background and Context

Civil registration was introduced in India in the last century, mainly as an aid to public health administration. However, registration was kept voluntary, and different provinces had different legislation, with no standardisation of concepts, definitions, and classifications. Various commissions and committees were then set up to review the civil registration-based vital statistics system. These led to a uniform piece of legislation, the Registration of Births and Deaths (RBD) Act, 1969, which replaced the diverse laws that existed on the subject, and the Model Rules framed under this Act sought to overcome the problem of multiplicity of Acts and Rules. The Registration of Births and Deaths Act provides for compulsory registration of all births and deaths in the country.

Under the Registration of Births and Deaths Act a hierarchically organised registration machinery was set up in the country to register the occurrence of births and deaths in allotted areas. This machinery is headed by the Registrar General of India at the Centre, District Registrars in the districts, and Registrars and Sub-Registrars within a district. In rural Maharashtra, where our study village is located, the Gram Sevak or the Panchayat Secretary, employed by the State Government, concurrently serves as a Registrar.

As mentioned earlier, the National Statistical Commission has pointed out that the Civil Registration System is deficient, and suffers from poor coverage and quality. Table A-1 in the Appendix to this paper shows that, according to data from the Sample Registration System (which is one of the means to validate the coverage of the Civil Registration System), only 69 per cent of births were estimated to have been registered in 2005 in India as a whole. Another important means of validating the coverage of the Civil Registration System is the National Family Health Survey (NFHS). The NFHS-3 for 2005-06, for example, collected information on whether each child in the age group 0-4 years had a birth certificate, and if not, whether their births were registered with the Civil Registration System. In India, according to the NFHS-3, 41 per cent of children under the age of five years had had their births registered with the Civil Registration System. However, only 27 percent of children under the age of five years had birth certificates.⁴

Levels of registration varied widely across States. The estimated level of birth registration in Maharashtra for 2005 was 85.9 per cent.

The Registrar General’s Report on Working of the Registration of Births & Deaths Act, 1969 pointed to lack of awareness among the general public about the statutory requirement to register as one of the reasons for under-registration.⁵ The Registrar General’s Report of 1999 also pointed out that, with respect to registration, there was a general apathy, especially in rural areas and among low-income groups, as no personal benefits were perceived as accruing from registration.⁶

Anganwadis, or centres for child-care and mother-care, were started in India in 1975 as part of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme, with financial and technical assistance from UNICEF and the World Bank. Anganwadis offer supplementary feeding facilities for children in the 0–6 age group, pregnant women, and lactating mothers; pre-school facilities for children aged 3 to 6; maternal and child health-care services such as immunisation and vitamin supplements; and nutrition and health education for mothers. Anganwadi workers are required to maintain registers and records containing details of population, births and deaths, pregnancies, immunisation of children, etc., in collaboration with Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANMs).

As mentioned, the High Level Expert Committee on Basic Statistics for Local Level Development has suggested that the registers maintained by Anganwadi workers have the potential to provide a basis for local-level development measures.⁷ The Anganwadi birth register is meant to include the births of all children resident in a village, and it is therefore a very useful source of data for planning health and family welfare programmes at the village level.

This study is also related to a broader issue. A birth record is a particular kind of administrative record. Administrative records and surveys are the two major sources of official data, and, as such, they play an important role in the modern statistical systems of countries.⁸ The administrative registers maintained by the welfare states of Nordic countries are so advanced that they can substitute for almost all survey data, including censuses.⁹ In contrast, most other countries in the world, whose administrative records are much less sophisticated than those of the Nordic countries, have an “unrecorded” or “non-observed” economy.¹⁰ The concern for maintaining and using administrative records has been growing in the contemporary world.¹¹ In India, the National Statistical Commission has found that the major deficiencies in socio-economic statistics are attributable largely to the collapse of the administrative statistical system.¹² India has a well-established National Sample Survey (NSS) network,¹³ but that cannot easily compensate for the deficiencies of the administrative statistical system, particularly considering the demand for decentralised databases for small areas such as villages.

Objective of the Study

The objective of our study was to conduct a micro-level discrepancy analysis, comparing each and every birth event recorded in the administrative records of a village with the corresponding person in PARI’s census-type database. We attempted to assess the effectiveness in registration of births by the Civil Registration System in the village of Warwat Khanderao in Buldhana district of Maharashtra by investigating why some of the births had not been registered as well as the socio-economic background of those people from the village who had stayed out of the birth registers. We also attempted a preliminary assessment of the potential of village-level birth records for the purpose of micro-level planning.

Village Profile

Location

Warwat Khanderao village belongs to Sangrampur tehsil of Buldhana district in the State of Maharashtra. The nearest town, Shegaon, is 20 km from the village and is connected by road. The village does not have a primary health centre (PHC) or any other medical facilities.

Population and Demographic Features

During the 2007 PARI survey, 250 households with a population of 1,308 persons were resident in the village. The number of females per 100 males was 99. There were 130 children in the village aged five years or less.

Literacy Levels

The village has a primary school, and a middle school that offers education up to class 7. The literacy level of the population in 2007 is given in Table 1.

Occupational Structure

The village is primarily dependent on agriculture, with 84 per cent of the work force relying on agriculture for their livelihood (Table 2). Within the agricultural work force, 69 per cent were cultivators and 15 per cent were agricultural labourers. The shares of non-agricultural labourers and salaried employees were negligible.

The major crop cultivated in 2007 was cotton. Other crops, like groundnut, sunflower, green gram, sesame, sorghum (jowar), maize, pulses, wheat, red gram, and black gram were also cultivated, but had a very small share in the gross cropped area. Cotton was cultivated in the kharif season, from June–July to October–November, and was intercropped mainly with green gram and red gram. A few cultivators raised wheat during the rabi season, from November–December to February. There was no irrigation in the village, and cultivation was rain-fed.

Methodology and Database

The village was surveyed as part of the Project on Agrarian Relations in India (PARI) in May 2007. This was a census-type survey that covered all the households in the village. The PARI database has detailed demographic data on all the members of the households in the village.

Birth Registers of the Civil Registration System in the Village

We identified all children in the age-group five years and below in the PARI database. We then visited the gram panchayat and obtained the Civil Registration System documents for the years 2002 to 2007, and made a list of children born, their parents, and the dates of registration of births. This list was then compared with the list of children from the PARI database, and discrepancies between the two data-sets were examined. Further, we conducted interviews in all the households in which children were born in the years 2002–2007, and whose names were not in the Civil Registration System but were present in the PARI database.

Birth Registers Maintained by Anganwadi Workers

We met the Anganwadi worker of the village, and obtained the birth registers maintained by Anganwadi workers for the calendar years 2005 and 2007. We made a list of children born in these years, their parents, and the dates of registration of births. This was then compared with the list of children in the PARI database and discrepancies between these two data-sets were examined. Finally, we compared and assessed the status of these two types of birth records.

Results

In the PARI database, based on the survey conducted in 2007, there were 130 children belonging to the age-group less than or equal to five years (hereafter “age-group 0–5 years”). We collected the details of births registered under the Civil Registration System in the gram panchayat for the period from 2002 to May 2007. The children fall into four categories.

Category 1: Children present in both the Civil Registration System and the PARI database
Category 2: Children present in the Civil Registration System but not in the PARI database
Category 3: Children not present in the Civil Registration System but present in the PARI database
Category 4: Children not present in either the Civil Registration System or the PARI database

Category 1: Children Present in Both the Civil Registration System and the PARI Database

Out of 130 children in the age-group 0–5 years in the PARI database, 29 children (or 22 per cent of all children) were registered under the Civil Registration System in the gram panchayat. The remaining 78 per cent were either not registered under the Civil Registration System or were registered elsewhere in Warwat Khanderao gram panchayat.

Category 2: Children Present in the Civil Registration System but Not in the PARI Database

There were 44 children whose names were present in the Civil Registration System of Warwat Khanderao gram panchayat, but absent in the PARI database. This was due to five major reasons.

1. Out of 44 children belonging to Category 2, 25 cases were such that their mothers, who had got married to men resident in other villages, came back to Warwat Khanderao for delivery. After delivery, as per the rule, the registration of birth is required to be made within 21 days. Hence, though not permanent residents of the village, these women registered with the Civil Registration System in Warwat Khanderao, and got their children’s birth certificates issued from this village.
2. The PARI survey did not cover 11 out of the 44 children in Category 2 as these households had either migrated to other places for work, gone to their native villages at the time of the survey, or were temporarily away from the village for medical treatment or other purposes.
3. There were three cases where the parents did not report the names of the children during the PARI survey.
4. In four cases, the household itself was not (for different reasons) covered under the PARI survey.
5. Apart from the above-mentioned cases, we also found that there were changes in the composition of households as families either joined together or separated, resulting in a reduction or an increase in the number of households. This posed some difficulty in cross-checking the Civil Registration System data and the PARI survey data. We overcame this problem with the help of the village sarpanch, who had knowledge of all the members of all households belonging to the village.

Category 3: Children Not Present in the Civil Registration System but Present in the PARI Database

There were 101 children belonging to this category, of whom 82 (81 per cent of the total number of children in the age-group 0–5 years) were born outside the village. Their births were registered with the Civil Registration System in the village or at the local body where the birth had taken place. Eighteen children (14 per cent of total children in the age-group 0–5 years) were not registered. One household had migrated out of the village after childbirth, and we could not verify whether it had registered the birth of the child.

There are two major issues that emerge with respect to Civil Registration System for this category of children. The first is that the birth of the majority of children in Warwat Khanderao gets recorded in a Civil Registration System register outside the village. The second is that the proportion of children whose birth was not registered at all was 14 per cent. A major feature of the Civil Registration System, then, is that it is not an accurate record of the children living in a village, since children tend to be registered in the village of their birth, which, in turn, is generally their mother’s native village. This undermines the usefulness of Civil Registration System as a source of information for planning at the grassroot level.

Category 4: Children Not Present in Either the Civil Registration System or the PARI Database

Children belonging to this category could not, for obvious reasons, be identified, due to lack of information in the two village-level databases.

A Detailed Analysis of the Socio-Economic Characteristics of the Discrepancies

A detailed analysis of the socio-economic characteristics of households in which the birth of a child was not registered (see Table A-2 in Appendix) in any Civil Registration System register reveals the following facts.

a. Of the 18 children whose birth was not registered, nine were male children and nine were females.
b. The literacy status of the parents of the unregistered children showed that the mothers of nine of the children were illiterate, while only two children had fathers who were illiterate.
c. Of the 18 children, 11 were Muslims, followed by three Kunbis, and one Buddhist, Maratha, and Beldar each (Table 4).
d. The unregistered children belonged to either peasant households (eight children) or agricultural labourer households (three children) (Table 5).

Anganwadi Register

The Anganwadi birth register should not have the problem of undercounting children because of the place of birth of the child, since all children, whether born in the village of residence (here, Warwat Khanderao) or in the native village of their mothers, are registered in the Anganwadi. For these reasons, we also tried to match each child in the Anganwadi births register for the period from 2005 to 2007 with children present in the PARI database. Out of 51 children identified in the PARI database as children born in the period from 2005 to May 2007, 33 children (or 65 per cent of all children) were recorded in the Anganwadi birth register during and after the period from 2005 to May 2007. And out of 50 children recorded in the ICDS births register for the period from 2005 to May 2007, 29 children (or 58 per cent of all children) were present in the PARI database.Therefore, although the Anganwadi register may cover more children in the village than the Civil Registration System data, the quality of its data remains open to question and calls for further investigation.¹⁴

We may summarise thus: the Anganwadi register is one that records the actual place of residence of the child, while the Civil Registration System in India typically records the place of where the child was born.

For international comparisons in this respect, the United Nations Statistics Division conducted a questionnaire survey in the 1980s on national practices for vital statistics systems, and observed that

for registration of live births, 96 of the 104 responding countries or areas indicated that the place of occurrence was the place indicated for birth registration. Eight countries or areas gave the mother’s residence as another place of registration. Only eight countries, namely, Denmark, Finland, Israel, Japan, Morocco, the Republic of Korea and Sweden stated that the mother's residence was the only place of registration (see UN 1985, p. 29).

However, the UN questionnaire survey may be out-of-date, since many local-level efforts and changes have occurred in many countries since the 1980s. We do not, however, know of any worldwide survey after the UN survey of the 1980s, nor of any useful discussion of this matter in the literature. The matter continues, of course, to be of importance – indeed of increasing importance -- to the discussion on rural welfare and local-level statistical support.

Conclusion

In order to assess the coverage and quality of village-level birth records for use in local-level development, we conducted a micro-level discrepancy analysis, comparing each and every birth event recorded in the administrative records in Warwat Khanderao with the corresponding person in PARI’s census-type data. The major findings of our investigation are as follows.

There were 130 children in the age-group 0–5 years in our database. The births of 85 per cent of them had been registered with the Civil Registration System in Warwat Khanderao or in the village of their birth (Table 6). The number of unregistered births in this village, while lower than the estimate for rural India, is still substantially higher than in many societies with universal registration.

In fact a majority of unregistered children living in Warwat Khanderao belong to what are called the “weaker sections of society.” There are also many administrative and management factors that are responsible for poor registration. A parent of an unregistered child told us that the gram sevak (the Registrar) is not present at the panchayat office of Warwat Khanderao every day, as he doubles as the gram sevak of another village as well. The gram sevak of the village suggested that the Civil Registration System should cover the births of all the children in the village, because birth certificates are required for school admissions. Primary school teachers in the same village, however, said that they accepted birth certificates of the Civil Registration System for only about 10 per cent of school enrolments. These facts suggest that there are administrative problems of coordination, monitoring, and supervision that affect the quality of the Civil Registration System data (9.3.29).

However, the major fact that emerges from this study of the Civil Registration System in the village of Warwat Khanderao is that, even if we assume 100 per cent registration of births by the Civil Registration System, it gives information only about births occurring within the village. In a majority of the cases, the mothers go to their native villages for delivery or to the nearest town for institutional delivery. Out of 130 children in the 0–5 age-group in 2007 in the PARI database, only 22.3 per cent (29 children) were registered under the Civil Registration System at the gram panchayat in Warwat Khanderao.

As shown in Table 6, 63.1 per cent of the total number of children (82 out of 130) were not registered at the gram panchayat in Warwat Khanderao, but were registered at other gram panchayats or local bodies outside this village. Therefore the majority of registered children in the 0–5 years age-group in the PARI database were registered outside Warwat Khanderao. These children were either born at medical facilities outside the village; or their mothers temporarily returned for delivery to their parents’ homes outside the village, and their births were registered in those places. We found that almost all the institutional births were recorded, as demanded by the law. However, since there are no medical facilities in Warwat Khanderao, mothers have to avail of medical facilities located in the neighbouring town for childbirth. Moreover, it is a general custom that a mother returns to her parents’ home for her first delivery. By contrast, the Civil Registration System registers at the gram panchayat in Warwat Khanderao include 25 children whose mothers, married to men resident in other villages, had temporarily come to Warwat Khanderao for delivery. Thus the information available from the Civil Registration System of a particular village is not of much use for the purpose of obtaining demographic data of children, as needed for local-level planning, as it does not cover all the children resident in the village.

The micro-level picture of the situation regarding birth records in a village was somewhat different from a macro-level view based on the Sample Registration System and the National Family Health Survey. We found that there was some difficulty in using the Civil Registration System for the purpose of local-level planning. Certain systematic changes would be required before the Civil Registration System can meet the increasing requirement and demand for decentralised databases, for purposes of micro-level planning in development programmes. We also tried to examine the potential of a village-level record like the Anganwadi register in the course of our village survey. Although the National Statistical Commission (2001) points to a deterioration in the Indian Administrative Statistical System, especially at its very roots, that is, at the very first stage of collection and recording of data (Para 14.3.10), we found that the Anganwadi birth register has the potential for helping village studies – but it needs further investigation.