Village-Level Birth Records: A Case Study
Abstract: This paper clarifies the status of village-level birth records in the Civil Registration System (CRS) by means of a case study in a village panchayat in rural Maharashtra. This present study is a micro-level discrepancy analysis that compares each birth event recorded by the village panchayat with the corresponding person in the database of the Project on Agrarian Relations on the same village.
As a result of the case study, we found that information from the CRS of a particular village cannot meet the increasing demand for statistics for village-level governance and development. The CRS birth records give information only about the births within the village panchayat, whereas in most cases mothers go to their native villages or for institutional delivery at the nearest town, and births are registered outside the village. Village-level statistical databases today require that village-level birth registers cover those whose place of usual residence is the village under consideration.