Photo: The Hindu
WINNING THE COUNT: The fear of losing Assembly seats to other
communities during delimitation of constituencies triggered a contest
that blurred the distinction between census and election. A 2008 picture
of voters outside a booth in Dimapur 1 constituency in Nagaland.
Competition for scare resources led tribals and non-tribals to
inflate the headcount for two decades, but the 2011 census proved
different
Nagaland’s population grew at decadal rates of 56 per cent during the
1980s and at 65 per cent in the 1990s. During this period, the State
registered the highest growth in population in all of India. But, as per
the 2011 Census, Nagaland’s population decreased by 0.47 per cent
between 2001 and 2011. This is the first time that a state in
independent India has witnessed an absolute decline in population in the
absence of war, famine, natural calamities, political disturbance, or
any significant changes in its socio-economic characteristics. And
research has shown that demographic factors like birth, death, and
lawful migration are insufficient to explain the changes in Nagaland’s
population between 1991 and 2011.
What explains the decline in population after abnormally high population growth in Nagaland?
Delimitation
In a 2005 interview with journalist Sanjoy Hazarika, the Chief Minister
of Nagaland Chief Minister, Neiphiu Rio, drew attention towards the
competitive inflation of population figures in 2001 due to the threat
posed by the impending delimitation of State Assembly constituencies. He
argued that the hill districts dominated by Naga tribes feared a loss
of five seats to Dimapur — the only plains district and the industrial
and transport hub of Nagaland — which has a lot of non-tribals. The
hills-plains divide overlaps with the Naga-non-Naga divide. According to
Mr. Rio, the actual population of Nagaland in 2001 was six lakh less
than the 2001 census figure of 20 lakh. He argued, however, that a
recount would not help as there were “warnings from village and district
levels that in the review, the population will increase, not decrease.”
So, instead of stirring up a hornet’s nest, the Central and State
governments adopted a cautious approach. To avoid ethnic conflict, the
Centre deferred delimitation to 2031, while the State government
rejected the 2001 census and concentrated on conducting the 2011 census
properly. The State government canvassed the Opposition, the
bureaucracy, and organisations of tribes, village elders, churches, and
students to convince the people that a reliable and accurate census was
indispensable “for (the) proper planning of development and also
establishing political and social harmony.” While the government’s
participative approach restored sanity to the process of census in
Nagaland and is worthy of being adopted by other government survey
organisations, the inflation of the headcount in the 2001 census
requires scrutiny to recognise the underlying socio-economic factors
that encouraged manipulation.
Nagaland’s small population (19.81 lakh) is divided into over two dozen
tribal and non-tribal communities. Inter-community competition for
scarce public resources manifests itself in a variety of ways in
Nagaland: resentment against outsiders (Bangladeshis), movements for
reservation in educational institutions and government jobs, demands for
division of Nagaland along tribal lines, and inter-tribal feuds among
insurgent groups. Until the late 1990s, hospitable conditions for the
growth of the private sector did not exist and the State was the biggest
actor in Nagaland’s economy, which added urgency to the competition for
public resources. This was manifested more than anything else in the
ever increasing voter turnouts over the years, as if the election were a
census.
Ethnic factor
But when elections are reduced to an ethnic head count, winning censuses
becomes necessary for winning elections. The Naga Hoho, the apex tribal
council, admitted as much when it noted that the census has been a much
misunderstood exercise in Nagaland and that people had equated it with
electoral rolls. In 2001, the struggle for public resources took a new
turn in Nagaland, when competitive inflation of electoral rolls spread
to the census, as if the census was an election. The fear of losing
Assembly seats to other communities in the 2002 delimitation of State
Assembly constituencies triggered this novel competition, which blurred
the distinction between census and election.
The conflict between Dimapur and the hill districts was the driving
force behind manipulation of the 2001 census. The hill districts feared
losing four Assembly seats to Dimapur if the Delimitation Commission
relied on the 1991 Census.
Threatened by the possibility of loss of political representation, the
hill districts inflated their numbers in the 2001 Census to the extent
that the loss would have been reduced to just one seat if the 2001
Census was used for delimitation. Since the tribes were not all equally
successful at false enumeration, conflict and litigation followed the
census.
After 2008, when an Ordinance deferred delimitation in Nagaland (and
Manipur, Assam, and Arunachal Pradesh) to until after the first census
after 2026, there was no incentive to inflate the population count.
Moreover, the government was alert to the possibility of subversion of
its data collection exercises. Unsurprisingly, a sample survey in 2009
revealed that the population count fell across the hill districts, which
had heavily inflated the count in 2001. This was confirmed later — the
2011 census reported a negative growth rate of five per cent in the hill
districts, whereas growth remained positive in Dimapur. If delimitation
is conducted as per the 2011 census, then Dimapur will gain six seats
at the expense of the hill districts.
So, deferring delimitation to the distant future is not a durable
solution to the problem of ethnic competition. The government made the
process of enumeration transparent by including all stakeholders in the
census exercise. It convinced them that, in the interests of the Naga
people, it was taking care to prevent manipulation in the census.
However, how long this new consensus among the people on not interfering
with official statistics will hold will depend critically on balanced
regional and sectoral growth in Nagaland outside the public sector of
the economy. With armed conflict on the ebb, this should not be
difficult. In addition to the immense potential for tourism and
handicrafts industries, Nagaland, being the second most literate State
in the country, has the essential human capital for growth in the
service sector.
(Ankush Agrawal and Vikas Kumar are with the Institute of Economic
Growth, Delhi, and Azim Premji University, Bangalore, respectively.)
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