A recent working paper by the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) has become the subject of much controversy over the past week. Its crux was the claim that minorities are "thriving" in India, as the share of Muslims in India has increased since 1950 while the share of Hindus declined. 

While the stated purpose of the working paper is to map changes in majority and minority population shares globally since 1950, it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out the paper's sinister intent: reinvigorate the debunked narrative of Muslims overtaking Hindus in India. 

The working paper's findings were almost immediately celebrated by popular right-wing accounts who saw it as a proof of their conspiracy theories. Media organisations followed suit and uncritically discussed the paper ad nauseam for the next few days, with the lead author appearing on prime-time news discussing the “alarming decline of Hindu population in India”. 

More importantly, the timing of the working paper's release, coming at the heels of Prime Minister Narendra Modi referring to Muslims as “those who have more children” at an election rally in Rajasthan, is certainly suspect. However, a lie repeated a thousand times is still a lie. 

The paper hypothesises that an increase in the share of the minority population over time is a good proxy for the well-being of minorities in a particular country. However, the paper does not provide any material basis for this hypothesis, as is expected of a scientific endeavour. 

Recent research in political economy finds the political representation of women and minorities to be a more crucial determinant of their well-being. Notably, the current Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government, advised by the EAC-PM, is one of the worst offenders with no Muslim MPs or MLAs in the Parliament or the 31 legislative assemblies.

It also conveniently “abstracts away” from the causes of such demographic changes, choosing to compress decades of history into two periods and not focus on the complex reasons underlying its evolution. However, the paper’s hypothesis falls apart on closer scrutiny. 

According to the RCS-Dem dataset used in the paper, the Buddhist population in Myanmar decreased from 79% to 71% and the Muslim population increased from 3.57% to 3.77% between 1950 and 2015. But no rational person would claim that Muslims were "thriving" in Myanmar right before the Rohingya genocide unfolded in 2016.

Also read: Fact Check: Old Data, New Spin in PM-EAC Report on India’s Population

The paper suggests that the Muslim population in India has grown by 43.15% since 1950, whereas the Hindu population has declined by 7.81%. While that is not incorrect, the change in total population shares since 1950 tells a different story. The share of Muslims in the total population went up from 9.84% in 1950 to 14.09% in 2015 (only a 4.25% increase in percentage points). For Hindus, it changed from 84.68% to 78.06% between 1950 and 2015. Looking at absolute numbers, we find that the Hindu population grew from 31.86 crore in 1950 to 100.44 crore in 2015 whereas the Muslim population grew from 3.7 crore to 18.12 crore in the same period. The authors and the media subsequently, however, have chosen to focus only on the “43% rise in Muslim population” as a 4.25 percentage point rise is unlikely to aid incendiary rhetoric. 

During the same period, the Buddhist population in India increased by 1520% — an increase the paper calls only “noticeable” and conveniently forgets to mention in percentage terms, as it did for Hindus and Muslims. 

Total Fertility Rate (TFR), defined as the average number of children born to a woman during her lifetime, is the most widely used statistic to determine the birth rate dynamics of a community. According to data from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), while Muslims do have a slightly higher TFR, the difference between Hindus and Muslims has been shrinking rapidly. Experts predict that soon the TFR for both the communities will converge and stabilise. Multiple studies have shown that factors like education, healthcare and income levels directly affect the TFR of a community. 

Indian states with better access to education, and healthcare have lower TFR than others. For instance, Muslim women in Karnataka had a TFR of 2.05 in 2019 whereas Hindu women in Bihar had a TFR of 2.88 children. It would be irresponsible to raise alarm about women in Bihar allegedly mass-producing kids to overtake other states and claim a larger share of the public revenue pie. Regrettably, that is precisely what certain sections of the media have been doing by amplifying this study's claims in the midst of a deeply divisive and communal election campaign.

Also read: Blaming Muslims for India's Population Growth Is Purely Hindutva Propaganda

In academia, a sin worse than plagiarism is perhaps contributing to virulent communal propaganda. We encourage the authors and the media to exercise restraint and not fall for the temptations of either, despite the struggling economic landscape. Finally, given the EAC-PM's interest in minority welfare, we believe that the public would be best served if it could hold the government accountable on the long overdue socio-economic caste census as it would reflect the true state of minorities in India.

Asad Tariq, Fizza Suhel, and Karthik Manickam provided valuable inputs to the article.

Mohit Verma is a Senior Research Associate at Good Business Lab, Bengaluru and Rohit James Joseph is a PhD Student in Economics at Ashoka University.

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