The government took almost a day to come up with estimates of the dead in the Kumbh stampedes. It did its best to not give out details, until being forced to say “30 died”. Subsequent reports put the numbers of the dead at 79, at least. Official figures are gung-ho on bathers attending the grand event, they are said to be in crores and hyped daily, as markers of the success of the government of Uttar Pradesh and the Centre. But there are no details on the number of people crushed. What is worse is that the government’s reluctance to part with numbers of the dead, does not surprise anyone.
Experts have spoken of a pervasive culture of less knowledge and information having become the norm in this past decade. The now-disbanded Planning Commission, for example, was the repository of reliable data sets and evidence. Contrast this with the pattern currently of only “good stories” with “inconvenient data…actively delegitimised”.
In a post-truth world, as opposed to facts, the effectiveness of your politics is weighed by ‘vibes’.
This is not because facts don’t matter but because they have great power to influence the shape of politics and claims. Suppressing data, ensuring that they are not publicised when they emerge, are important to cloud the air with baseless assertions.
In at least four arenas, the absence of data is helping run a particular kind of politics.
Population ‘explosion’ bogey will explode if facts are available
The first proposition of India being the most populous nation is itself not established by an Indian agency, as the postponed Census 2021 is yet to be conducted and there is no word about when it will be held.
So 140 crore or 1.4 billion is yet to be stated as an established fact by India. The PM raised a bogey of “population explosion”, from the Red Fort in 2019, followed by the Union finance minister in the budget speech last year, when Nirmala Sitharaman said, “a high-powered committee for an extensive consideration of the challenges arising from fast population growth and demographic changes” would be set up. But the Total Fertility Rate or TFR is set to go below 2.1. The TFR of 2.1 is the basic rate required to stabilise current population levels. As the last two National Family and Health Surveys (NFHS) have indicated, India is rushing into worryingly low territory as far as population goes and far from an “explosion” it needs to prepare for a large ageing cohort.
More so, the fall in the TFR is levelling off across communities and this trend has been at play since 2001. The steepest fall in fertility is indicated across Muslim communities in India and the figures out so far have made clear that fertility has very little to do with religion. But if facts like these emerge and authoritatively so through a Census, then where would hateful propaganda like asking Hindu families to “have three children” and sustaining falsehoods about rapidly increasing Muslim numbers go? Feeding a fear of the Muslim demographic being out of control is an essential part of Hindutva politics.
Tall claims on ration but feeding fewer numbers?
The BJP-led government has made much of its ration scheme. It has projected its responsibilities to provide food following an Act passed by parliament in 2013 falsely, as the personal munificence of PM Modi. But the basis of the total numbers being fed is the 14-year-old, 2011 Census. The Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati, told the Supreme Court in December 2024, that the NFSA had 81.35 crore eligible beneficiaries.
But this could be a serious under-estimation. Lawyers arguing for the Right to Food campaign say that there could be as many as 10 crore eligible (i.e. hungry) Indians being left out. Activists cited COVID-19 as a tipping point that may have left many unable to meet their daily needs as losing out. The government list not having been updated due to no Census has real world consequences. The Global Hunger Index 2024 testifies to the Indian situation as worrisome and worse-off from before.
In the 2024 Global Hunger Index, India ranked 105th out of the 127 countries with sufficient data to calculate 2024 GHI scores. It has a score of 27.3 in the 2024 Global Hunger Index, India has a level of hunger that is classified as “serious”. India, as it has done consistently with data and facts that are inconvenient to its political rhetoric, has dissed the Global Hunger Index data, calling it “a ploy to derail Viksit Bharat.”
No poverty numbers since 2012
Poverty numbers, after 2011-12 remain a mystery.
The absence of fresh data, not estimations relying on inflation to confuse the picture, allows politics misrepresenting claims to gain ground.
At the start of 2024, the NITI Aayog projected that “India is all set to reach single-digit poverty levels during 2024.” A few months on, the NITI Aayog CEO, B.V.R. Subrahmanyam said the poverty levels “could be closer to 5% or less”. He also asserted that rural deprivation “has almost disappeared” going by levels of consumption expenditure. But instead of undertaking a proper revised study, either taking the Tendulkar Committee’s recommendations as the basis, the method termed the Rangarajan method or guidelines proposed by the Arjun Sengupta Committee, the “5% poor” claim was made simply by adjusting the last 2011–12 poverty line for inflation using the Consumer Price Index and applying it to the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey data from 2022–23. In addition, there are many questionable assumptions about ‘welfare schemes’ working for the poor which render these numbers incomparable. A study by C.A. Sethu, L.T. Abhinav Surya and C.A. Ruthu, using the Rangarajan Method (which accounts for nutritional needs being met, not just expenditure) and the same 2022-2023 Household Consumption data, concluded that 26.4% of Indians are below the poverty line. This makes it a difference of more than 21 percentage points from government’s claims.
A comparable survey, a Census, or even releasing the numbers for the Socio-Economic Caste Census of 2011, which are available with the government but hidden, would help get closer to the true picture. Conversely, not getting proper evaluations done, helps the politics of the ruling party.
India is after all boasting about heading towards becoming the “fourth largest” economy in the world. It is bad enough that it is one with the lowest median income (approximately $ 2480 per annum) amongst large economies. That would only get underlined if the extent of deprivation and poverty is actually surveyed, updated and owned up to.
Masking COVID-19 deaths
It was exactly five years last month since COVID-19 was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the WHO. India declared its own ‘lockdown’ minus any preparation or information in March, five years ago.
A reluctance to face up to the deaths in India during COVID may well be among the reasons for the missing Census of 2021. The WHO estimates suggest a ten-fold discrepancy between the number of Covid dead in India and the ones recorded. India has denied any underestimation and says only about 4,81,000 have died, but WHO puts the number of the dead in India at 4.7 million, the highest in the world. A systematic headcount, the Census, one that India had not missed till 2011, since 1872, whether facing wars, disease or the partition of the country would establish how many have died, and fix the number of ‘excess deaths’. But in the absence of the Census, the BJP government can spin a tragic failure to even acknowledge the deaths on its head and claim Covid handling as a success story.
No national census for 14 years, a first in 150 years and a pattern by the government to debunk unflattering estimates put out by global agencies has resulted in the lack of crucial information on the most populous nation in the world. This is not just a detail that should only concern a geek. No data means even affected people are unclear about the whole picture. A pliant media then further gaslights citizens into seeing their own precarity as being one of their own making and not part of a general trend in the country.
The absence of data is not about academics and researchers losing out. It is actively helping the ruling party carry on with its politics without any roadblocks and preventing basic questions being asked of it.
Winston Smith in George Orwell’s 1984 says, “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.” But that freedom is premised on the knowledge of 2 and 2. If basic and critical data points are missing from the discourse, and instead, the citizen finds herself in a position of transparency inverted, where she is expected to share her data with the state, but the state being under no obligation to transparently and honestly share information with her, Winston would be unable to even find the 2 and 2, let alone add it up and arrive at 4.
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
