Findings of EAC-PM working paper being misreported, says think tank
The Population Foundation of India (PFI) on Thursday night expressed deep concern about media reports misrepresenting the data set put out by the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) in a recently published working paper on the share of religious minorities in 167 countries, including India.
The PFI, an independent think tank working on population trends and reproductive/sexual health, said that media outlets were misreporting the
ndings contained in the working paper “to spread alarm regarding the growth of the Muslim population”. “Such interpretations are not only inaccurate but also misleading and baseless,” it said.
In the working paper titled “Share of religious minorities: a cross-country analysis (1950-2015)” published
Successive Censuses have shown that growth rate of Muslims is on the decline, the PFI said
on May 7, the EACPM examines the shares of majority and minority religious communities in populations of 167 countries, including India.
The paper said that for India, while the share in population of Muslims increased by 43.15% in this time period, the share in population of Hindus decreased by 7.82%, adding that in 1950, Hindus’ share in population was 84.68%, which came down to 78.06% in 2015. Similarly, Muslims’ share had risen from 9.84% to 14.09%.
The 2011 Census had counted 96.63 crore Hindus, 79.8% of the population and 17.22 crore Muslims, 14.2% of the population, at the time.
The working paper has expressed the dierence in populations between 1950 and 2015 as a percentage of the population of those respective religious groups in 1950. As a result, the Muslim community’s dierence in share of population, which is a rise of 4.25 percentage points, is being expressed as a “43.15% increase” compared to the Muslim population as of 1950. Using this method, the paper has concluded that Hindus’ share declined by 7.82%, Christians’ rose by 5.38%, Sikhs’ went up by 6.58%, and that of Parsis went down by 85%.
It has not used this presentation of data for Buddhists and Jains. If one were to apply the same calculations, it would show the Buddhist population had increased by 1,520% when in fact their share had increased from 0.05% to 0.81% in the total population.
Meanwhile, the PFI pointed out in its statement, “Successful family planning programmes in
Muslim-majority countries like Bangladesh and Indonesia have resulted in lower birth rates compared to India. These countries have achieved this through higher levels of female education, greater employment opportunities, and better access to contraceptive choices. This clearly shows that fertility decline is in®uenced by development factors rather than religious a¯liation.”
“The media’s selective portrayal of data is an example of misrepresentation that ignores broader demographic trends,” the PFI statement said.
The PFI added that successive Censuses have shown that the decadal growth rate of Muslims has been on the decline for three decades now. It also noted that National Family Health Surveys had also shown that the total fertility rate (TFR) in India was declining, with the largest decline being seen amongst Muslims.