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Demograhpic Amusements - By- Shaili Chopra Shaili is currently a senior graduate student in Economics Honours at Delhi University, India. She is the features editor of a print magazine called "Campus dot com" for the university itself. She is a fond cook and a intrepid traveller. She is fond of writing and poetry. Her poetry and writings are published in many magazines, Newspapers and on websites.

I had never thought Indian economics could be as much fun until I read a chapter on Indian experience of demographic aspects of development constraints. An interesting flight of facts amused my senses to endless laughter. The highlights of the chapter are little hard to forget.

Urbanisation- India's definition of a town has not changed since 1961.
Shelter-anything that has a floor and a covering on top (wonder why we are a slum state?). America's definition for shelter is somewhat more concrete; a brick and mortar two-room house with proper sanitation.
The proportion of Indian urban population has doubled over 1901 to 2000! (11% to 26%!)

Contraceptive prevalence rate- we are 47% while Sri Lanka is 65%.
Acceptance of contraception comes to couples after 32 years of age!
India takes pride in having been the first country to launch a state-run programme for promoting family welfare.

Fertility- Indian fertility rates have been much lower than the Hutterite women. Hutterites bore 10 children on an average pre-1940s, Indian bore 7!

Abortions- total number of registered abortions under the Medical Termination of Pregnancies acts since 1972 up to 1989 has been 6.4 million. (We surely have covered up on the way to a billion plus!)

Education- the Fifth All India Educational Survey of 1985 tells the 95% of rural population has access to a primary school within 1 km (walking distance that is) for our 5 lakhs villages but when the relevant unit used is a habitation, almost 50% of our 979,000 habitations don't have access to primary education.

To end this interesting lecture, our professor just had to add "It is better to sit down than to stand, it is better to lie down than to sit, but death is the best of all," an Indian proverb quoted in Sébastien Roch de Chamfort

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