-TheWire.in Sometimes, the more newspapers write on a subject, the more obscure it becomes, especially if it comes dressed in apocalyptic fervour. On August 26, most media reports on the just released Census 2011 data on ‘population by religious community’ could easily have been mistaken for a present-day stock market update: Hindus slide from 80.5 % to 79.8 %; Muslims climb from 13.4 % to 14.2 %, showing the highest surge...
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Population growth slowing for all; on sex ratio, Muslims better than Hindus -Poonam Muttreja
-The Indian Express While decadal growth rates are declining among all religious communities, the decline has been sharper among Muslims than among Hindus over the last three decades. The Census 2011 data on Population by Religious Communities, released by the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, confirms the declining trend in population growth rate in the country. While decadal growth rates are declining among all religious communities, the decline has been...
More »Census 2011 religious data: Why it’s tough to use these numbers for identity politics -Seema Chishti
-The Indian Express The politics of what these figures could mean or what they could be 'spun' to mean is something to ponder. As far as demographers go, Census 2011 brings good news on the population stabilisation front. And now we know that even across religions, across all communities, there is a decline in population growth rates. Alok Vajpeyi, of the Population Foundation of India who has studied the data in...
More »Children of a different law -G Sampath
-The Hindu A recent sting video shows the men acquitted in the Laxmanpur Bathe case boasting about the same massacre. Will the passing of the Prevention of Atrocities (Amendment) Bill finally change the way justice is delivered to Dalits? On the night of December 1, 1997, in Laxmanpur Bathe, a village in Bihar’s Arwal district 90 km from Patna, 58 Dalits were slaughtered by a gang of dominant caste men that went...
More »In India, no toilets for women -Arindam Chakrabarti
-The Hindu A young girl in Jharkhand committed suicide because her father refused to build a toilet for her. When will the Indian male’s insensitivity to women’s basic needs change? Indian men urgently need basic ethical education. Since the 19th century, women’s education has been a progressive obsession with enlightened Indian social reformers. Although much remains to be done to get anywhere close to equal access to education for the genders, there...
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