Over the last 50 years, any talk of delimitation has polarised opinion in India. The constitutional requirement of delimitation after each census in order to ensure the ‘One Person, One Vote, One Value’ principle was put on hold in 1971 for 25 years, and then frozen yet again for 25 years in 2001. The reason: today’s higher per capita income states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu have a lower decadal growth rate of population than states like UP and Bihar. This has led to politicians like Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin to assert that if the present distribution of Lok Sabha seats changes with delimitation, the south — which has controlled its population better and is more prosperous — will suffer and ‘lose representation’. It is in this context that Ravi K Mishra, historian and joint director at Prime Ministers Museum and Library, has come out with a book that seeks to reverse the above commonsense to argue that all regions of India had experienced high phases of population growth at different points of time, and that the belief that the south controlled its population while the north did not is a belief having very little basis in evidence. Analysing Census data since 1881 — and looking at demographic patterns adjusted to the present boundaries of Indian states — Mishra’s study says that contrary to popular perception, it was the south that had higher decadal growth rates of population till about 1971, after which the north Indian states began to grow faster than the south. The book shows that Kerala doubled its population by 1931, “rising from slightly less than 50 lakh in 1881 to nearly a crore”. Significantly, Kerala was also the first state to double its population. From 1931 to 1971, the population of Kerala doubled again and then began to slow down. Its share in India’s population grew from less than 2.5 per cent in 1881 to 3.89 per cent, and then began to decrease after 1971, till it became 2.76 per cent in 2011 — as it became the first Indian state to reach lower fertility as well as mortality rates. The erstwhile Madras Presidency also recorded a population growth above the national average after 1881, the book states, with the population rising about 58 percent till 1941. A similar pattern was seen in Mysore state and Hyderabad state. Mishra retrospectively calculates, according to current boundaries, the population of the southern states vis-a-vis the national population at various points: it was 21.69 per cent in 1881, 24.23 per cent in 1901, 25.56 per cent in 1911 and 26 per cent in 1951, the year of its peak in India. By 1971, the share of the south in Indian population had declined to 24.69 per cent, suggesting the demographic transition that had begun to kick in by now. As per Mishra's research, in the 1971 census, the north's decadal growth of population was 23.62 per cent and that of the south was 22.86 per cent. The national growth in the 1961-71 period was 24.8 per cent, India's peak decadal growth rate of population ever, because the east and the west were growing faster than the north and south in this census period. Mishra’s book shows that Uttar Pradesh witnessed hardly any population growth between 1881 and 1921. As a whole, the Hindi belt hovered around a stagnant 11 crore population from 1881 to 1921. Even up to 1961, the north grew slower than the south in terms of population. From a population of 20.93 percent of the Indian population in 1881, Uttar Pradesh had come down to a national share of 15.3 per cent of the population by 1971. “It took Uttar Pradesh no less than a century to double its 1881 population of 4.5 crores,” Mishra states. The book shows that Hindi-speaking states as a whole constituted 51.75 per cent of India’s population in 1881, came down to 42.6 per cent in 1951, and have inched upwards in recent decades to reach 46.47 per cent in 2011. Demographic transition has followed similar patterns globally, Mishra contends. Populations are stagnant when there is a high birth rate but also a high death rate — among infants, children and also adults — because of lack of nutrition, sanitation and healthcare. However, when nutrition, sanitation and health care improve, mortality is the first to fall, while birth rates remain high, leading to a spurt in population. It takes some decades for the fertility rate to start falling, after which population stabilisation happens. Making this argument, Mishra says that the belief that the south succeeded while the north failed in population control is a belief not supported by evidence, as reproductive choices are personal to people and not based on suggestions by policy makers. The increase in north India’s decadal growth rates of population since 1971, Mishra contends, led to the erroneous conclusion among people that there was an inherent north-south cultural divide leading to differential growth rates of population. The book suggests how delimitation can be attempted — it says that Kerala’s number of Lok Sabha seats should form the base, and the seats of other states be increased as per present populations. The author suggests that Rajya Sabha seats should be increased keeping the regional allocation intact so that Constitutional amendments not to the liking of southern Members of Parliament cannot be pushed through by northern MPs. Mishra also argues that the north-south divide is a misnomer here, and that the divide is more like the south vs the west. He calculates that if Kerala’s seats remain at 20 and seats of other states increase, Uttar Pradesh is likely to go from 80 to 134 seats, Bihar from 40 to 73 seats, and Maharashtra from 48 to 71 seats. Counter-intuitive in many ways, the book is a rigorous contribution to the debate. But that may not be enough for delimitation to indeed happen, because of some reasons not foreseen by the Constitution makers. Parties powerful in UP, Bihar and Maharashtra will become absolute gainers if delimitation were to happen, and those strong in Kerala or Tamil Nadu net losers. And while it is true that the Constitutional mandate in ‘One Person, One Vote, One Value’, one may argue that increase in the number of MPs from some states may benefit political leaders and parties there and not individuals in those states — as an MP representing his electors is often more a notional idea than an objective reality. While the defining feature of our Constitution is ‘equality’, any digression from formal equality is done in favour of the disadvantaged rather than the more well-off. To reverse that would be to undo the progressive nature of the Constitution, but insisting on delimitation may also mean staring at a deep sense of unease in the south.
