Only Delhi, WB, Goa, Tripura, Mizoram have achieved 100% death-birth registration: SBI

After 75 years of Independence only 5 states – Delhi, Goa, Mizoram, Tripura and West Bengal – have achieved 100% success rate in institutional registration of both birth and death cases, said a report from State Bank of India.

Besides these five, only 11 states have achieved 100% birth registration while 15 states have full registration of deaths, the report revealed. The study was undertaken during 2019-20 in a period before the extraordinary year of the pandemic.

The percentage of institutional birth registration is below 75 in 3 states and death registration in 8 states.

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The country’s largest lender State Bank of India recently prepared a study ‘Decoding births and deaths in India’.

In 2019 at pan-India level, birth registration stood at 92.7% against 56% in 2000. A similar trend was observed in death registration which increased from 49% in 2000 to 92% in 2019.

In 2000, the registration of death was only 38 lakh, whereas the estimated death was around 78 lakh in the country.

However, with the Government’s efforts the registration of deaths has been increasing and the gap between the estimation and registration has reduced to only 7 lakh in 2019, with a zero gap in 19 out of 36 States/UTs.

On the other hand, big states like Bihar, UP and MP are not in a good shape. Birth registration in these states hover between 75% and 90% but in death registration these states are in below the 75% mark.

Out of 30 states/UTs, 15 states/UTs achieved 100% death registration, 7 states are between 75% and 99% and 8 states/UTs below 75%.

In birth registration, 11 states already achieved 100%, 16 states achieved between 75% and 99% and only 3 states scored below 75%.

No medical attention

Even now about 34.5% deaths in the country took place without receiving any medical attention. Almost 17% birth in the country still happens outside a formal setup.

“It is quite possible that no diagnosis was undertaken and disease and death underreporting is not a new phenomena in India. Only better medical attention can lead to even better disease profiling and saving of lives in India,” said the SBI report.

According to the report, almost 83% of the total births took place under institutional setup in 2019. It was 56% in 2009.

But for death the picture is almost flat, 40% people were getting medical attention in 2009, this figure was 45.6% in 2019.

“Age-bracket wise death registration for all the major states shows that North Eastern states along with Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have recorded 20% or above deaths in 15-44 year bracket in their total registered deaths, against all India average at 16%,” said the report prepared by Soumya Kanti Ghosh, chief economic adviser of the bank.

Demography wise trend

The study also considered the birth and death rates of all the states. States in North-East and eastern India experienced higher birth and lower death rates, which shows that going forward these will have higher population growth.

The southern states are more concentrated in the low birth and high death rate, thus showing a slowing population growth, said the SBI study.

States in north, central and west India are showing mixed trends with some states witnessing low birth and low death and some other witnessing high birth and high death per hundred, thus making it a difficult to find a geographical pattern.

“We have done this study to understand the birth-death rate of India, but it was done before the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic in March, 2020. The study makes us understand that ramping up public health infrastructure and increasing number of public health care professionals is the key of changing the landscape of the country. And obviously Covid-19 had a worst effect on India’s population,” said Ghosh.