Measuring Change: The Hindu Editorial on the Credibility of Socio-Economic Surveys

Fifth edition of National Family Health Survey (NFHS) Provides a valuable insight into the ongoing changes in Indian society. It highlights traditional parameters, for example immunization in children, births and nutrition levels in registered hospital facilities. While there has been a general improvement in these parameters, nutrition has shown mixed signs. The benefit in childhood nutrition was small as obesity levels improved. The prevalence of anemia has actually gotten worse since the last survey in 2015-16. But the major contribution of the survey is its insight into behavioral and sociological brainstorming. When the highlights were made public last year, the focus was on India’s declining total fertility rate, which for the first time in the country’s history fell below the replacement level, or TFR (total fertility rate) of 2.1. If the trend continues, India’s population was on the decline, in line with what has been observed in developed countries, and theoretically this means better living standards per capita and greater gender equality. Since this TFR was achieved in most states, the two notable exceptions being the most populous Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, it was also evidence that population decline could be achieved without state policies and that family planning took deep root. Huh. More detailed findings made public last week suggest that the fallout is agnostic to religion.

The fertility rate among Muslims fell from 2.3 in 2019-2021 to 2.6 in 2015-16, the fastest among all religious communities, compared to 4.4 in NFHS 1 in 1992-93. Another set of subjective questions that the NFHS tries to answer using hard data is gender equality. Less than a third of married women are working and about 44% do not have the freedom to go to the market alone. However, a little over 80% said they could turn down sex demands from their husbands. This has implications for the legal questions surrounding marital rape. Only 72% of Indian men think that coercing, threatening or using force is not right if a woman is forbidden to have sex, which again points to the vast area that men have to enter into marriage. There is a need to educate about equality, choice and freedom. This question first made it into the Family Health Survey, as did another question about the number of births and deaths registered in the Family Survey. Several surveys such as NFHS, Sample Registration Survey, Census, Labour, Economic Survey and Inquiry Methods are essential for insight about a vast and complex country like India; The Center should invest more to improve their credibility.