Short brief on Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Systems

The infant mortality rate of the country, the birth rate of the country, the death rate of the country etc all are the matters that we have studied during the school times in social science or economics subjects. These concepts are used for identifying the status and welfare and economic conditions of a country. Have you ever thought about how the exact number or percentage of the birth rate, death rate or infant mortality rate are calculated throughout a country? When enormous and remote birth and death takes place, how can the government keep track of it? You might have thought about the hurdles of getting a birth certificate or death certificate for our future references. But you might have not thought about all these factors. Here comes the importance of civil registration and vital statistical systems. Through this blog let us have a short brief on Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Systems.

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What is Civil Registration and Vital Statistical system

The civil registration and vital statistics abbreviated as the CRVS registers all the birth and deaths, issues birth certificate and death certificate and often records marriages and divorces. As part of the human resources, it is a system that records or registers all the matters related to persons civil life. As per the definition and guidance of the United Nations the CRVS is defined and taught in a particular way.

Civil registration is defined by the UN as:

… “the continuous, permanent, compulsory, and universal recording of the occurrence and characteristics of vital events (live births, deaths, fetal deaths, marriages, and divorces) and other civil status events pertaining to the population as provided by decree, law or regulation, in accordance with the legal requirements in each country.”

Development and strengthening of CRVS systems are important for improving the quality of a country’s vital statistics, and for using this information to guide policies and programmes. This broader concept has been captured in the UN definition of a vital statistics system as:

“… the total process of: 1) collecting information by civil registration or enumeration on the frequency or occurrence of specified and defined vital events, as well as relevant characteristics of the events themselves and the person or persons concerned; and 2) compiling, processing, analyzing, evaluating, presenting and disseminating these data in statistical form.”

Civil Registration and Vital Statistical System – India

Statutory Authority

The civil registration and vital statistical system are the system that records vital information about the birth and death and other civil actions of a person as per the statutory authority. The data collection is done as per the provisions of a central Act namely Registration of Births and Deaths (RBD) Act, 1969 and State Rules framed on the basis of Model Rules, 1999. By this act it is mandatory to record the death and birth of a person. It has to be registered from the place of the occurrence of the event. Normally it has to be registered within a time period of 21 days. But the delay is permissible according to the provisions of section 13 of the RBD Act. The Registrar General, India (RGI) at the Central level, Chief Registrar has been declared as the chief executive authority in the respective State level, District Registrar for each district within the State.

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Sample Registration system (SRS)

In order to comply the statutory provisions and comply with the requirements of civil registration and vital statical system, office of Registrar General, India, initiated the scheme of sample registration of births and deaths in India popularly known as Sample Registration System (SRS) in 1964-65 on a pilot basis and on full scale from 1969-70. The SRS since then has been providing data on a regular basis.

The SRS is based on dual data collection. The data will be collected from the village/urban blocks regarding the birth and death. The data is collected by two officers. One is a part time enumerator and the other is a full-time supervisor who conducts a survey once in 6 months. This data will be matched and avoided the duplicates and counted to formulate the data without having any miss. The revision of the SRS is undertaken based on last year’s census, as the census collects all the demographic data to know the population and other statistical requirements of a country. The first replacement was carried out in 1977-78 and the last being in 2014.

The main components of SRS according to official website of censusindia are given by

• Baseline survey of the sample units to obtain demographic details of the usual resident population of the sample areas.
• Continuous (longitudinal) enumeration of vital events pertaining to the usual resident population by the enumerator.
• Independent retrospective half yearly surveys for recording births and deaths which occurred during the half year under reference and updating the House list, Household schedule and the list of women in the reproductive age group along with their pregnancy status by the Supervisor.
• Matching of events recorded during continuous enumeration and those listed in the course of half yearly survey.
• Field verification of unmatched and partially matched events; and
• Filling of Verbal Autopsy Forms for finalized deaths.

Conclusion

The CRVS is important for knowing the human resource statistical analysis framing government policies and schemes. As a competitive aspirant you should know how the statistical data has been collected and analysed more than just knowing the indices and data. This kind of government system and its functioning is important to be known and familiarised for a government exam aspirant. Study with entri app and get all basic information regarding the government functioning. Keep studying keep winning