Commentary/Dilip D'Souza

Make Up The Numbers, Won't You?

Actually, I can't trace who first began flinging the number about. Whoever it was, it is probably laughing quietly somewhere. The number has gone on to achieve some kind of cult status, quoted by earnest scholars as well as learned ministers whenever they want to wring their hands about the pitiful condition Bombay is in. Meanwhile, it -- the person responsible -- is probably quietly and gleefully cooking up some other numbers for us.

The number in question is 350. And it is wrong. How wrong? Try better than twenty times inflated. But that hardly mattered to Maharashtra's Urban Development Minister Ravindra Mane, the latest eminence to use it. Last week, he told the honourable members of the legislative assembly that '350 families migrate to Mumbai daily and now even the creeks [are] not free of slums.'

Yes, every few weeks, somebody else announces that 350 families are turning up in this vast city every day. Besides the number being wrong, this announcement is always accompanied by two things: one, the assumption that these 350 families all live in slums; two, that they are somehow responsible for all of Bombay's problems, civic and otherwise. In Mane's case, both apply. As also this: that his government is 'willing to tackle' the city's problems 'provided human rights organisations do not set up obstacles in its path.' 'Do not let human rights or Amnesty hinder us!' he thundered.

For good measure, MLA Kirit Somaiya rose and told the House that the city's population growth was 'not natural but it was owing to migration.'

Here's the truth, Mane, Somaiya and whoever else cares to know. Immigration into Bombay forms a small and decreasing fraction of the city's population growth. Far greater is the contribution from natural causes. Births, in a word. If Bombay is overcrowded, the fault is overwhelmingly that of its own fertile, fecund residents. That's D'Souza and Mane and Joshi and Lakshman, not some unwashed Vipin or Abdul or Kuruvamma getting off the Pushpak Express at Dadar station.

Of course, you want proof. Figures. Not made up ones. An organisation called the Centre for Research & Development has those. In April, 1995, it published the second edition of its Socio-Economic Review of Greater Bombay, though the book became available only towards the end of 1996.

The CRD is chaired by D D Sathe, a former chief secretary of Maharashtra. He also chaired the committee that prepared the report. On the committee were various senior government officials -- including a former executive director of the Reserve Bank of India -- and professors of the economics department of Bombay University. They were advised by a galaxy of experts ranging from the current Chief Secretary, Dinesh Afzulpurkar, to the Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic), Hasan Gafoor.

Data for the report came from different state and central government departments, agencies such as the Bombay Municipal Corporation and the Bombay Metropolitan Region Development Authority, census figures and other publications. I detail all this because there should be no doubt in your mind about the authority of this Review, nor about the credentials of those who authored it.

In the decade 1981-91, says the Review, the net migration into Bombay was 283,000 people. That is, an average of 78 people migrated into Bombay each day of that decade: taking the generally accepted norm of 5 people per family, that's less than 16 families.

Stack this up, please do, against Mane's 350 families.

The highest that immigration into Bombay has ever been was in the 1970s, when it averaged less than 60 families a day. If there were indeed 350 families trooping into Bombay daily, the city's 1991 population would have been not the 10 million that the census found, but 16 million. Maybe those extra 6 million are hiding in the assembly?

So what about that other contributor to growth, babies produced by Bombay's hyperactive couples? In 1991, the Review says, the city's birth rate was 2.17%, a figure that has been generally declining for a long time. Taking the 1991 population of 10 million people, about 217,000 babies were born in the city that year. Or 595 each day.

Did those figures jump out at you? They should have. Every day of 1991, for every two people who turned up in Bombay from outside, fifteen more were born here. Births contribute 7.5 times more to the city's population growth than does migration.

The Review notes: '...though migration's relative contribution [has] been declining in successive decades since 1951 [it went below 50% sometime in the 1960s], the absolute volume of net migration declined only in the 1980s." And later: "[N]atural increase contributed most (83%) to the growth of Bombay's population in 1981-91.'

Stack this up, if you will, against Somaiya's pronouncement.

Now I should point out that the Review remarks on the startling decline in migration figures in the 1980s. It's possible more migration is now taking place into areas on the mainland like Thane. The Review also speculates that perhaps the 1991 Census undercounted the population slightly. But even if you look at some 'more plausible' projections from earlier data that the Review offers, migration into Bombay in the 1980s was 48 families, or 241 people, a day.

Which, you will notice, is well below half the 595 daily births. All of which, you might think, would give rise to calls to slow down the production of those cuddly babies.

But how much easier it is, even if misguided, to blame migration for conditions in the city! And, doing that, why not confine the blame only to those immigrants who end up on our streets, in slums? White collar, middle class people who move to Bombay -- the overwhelming majority of those legislators among them -- enter nobody's calculations.

You see, the image of a flood of filthy immigrants is one of those great middle-class myths, cherished and trotted out regularly. Mane and Somaiya only reflect this fond belief. 'They are illegal encroachers, they breed like rabbits,' I've heard people say, lips curled in contempt, of slum dwellers. 'They are straining the city's facilities without paying any taxes, the dirty good-for-nothings.' And, one memorable time, this from a friend: 'They only come here to make money! I don't approve of that at all!'

What you may not hear said so easily: "Excuse me while I empty my plate of leftovers onto the street. My building? Nice, isn't it? It was built on land set aside for a park but later illegally turned over to builders; I paid for my flat entirely in black money. Ah, and here are my kids, Chunnu, Munnu, Pappu, Sonu and Babita."

Middle-class eccentricities apart, the simple truth is this: if we want to control the growth of Bombay's population, fewer babies must be born. The single most effective way to achieve this -- innumerable studies support this conclusion, but I won't inflict any more figures on you -- is to educate women. Educate everyone, but particularly women. The longer women stay in school, the more educated they become, the fewer the babies they will have. The slower Bombay's population increase will be.

That must be too simple an equation for the men who rule us. Instead, they insist that the government must carry out that sacred duty of evicting slum dwellers -- by golly, they are on our creeks too! And to damnation with all those nasty human rights groups who object.

Yes, and did you know that 4,592 human rights groups object every single day? That's right, so now go spread the word.

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