India recorded over one crore deaths in 2021, the worst year of the Covid-19 pandemic for the country, according to Union government data released on May 7. An excess of nearly 21 lakh deaths compared to 2020. While all deaths in the period cannot be attributed to Covid-19, analysts have said it points to massive undercounting of victims in a year when the pandemic peaked.
The Office of the Registrar General has released three annual reports that shed light on the deaths and births in India in 2021 — the Sample Registration System (SRS) Statistical Report, the Civil Registration System (CRS) report, and the Medical Certification of Cause of Death (MCCD) report. These reports now raise serious questions about transparency of the Union government and several state governments in reporting Covid-19 deaths.
Data from the Vital Statistics of India based on the CRS 2021 report, the most comprehensive mortality data source in India, shows the number of registered deaths went up from 81.2 lakh in 2020 to 1.02 crore in 2021, a surge of 21 lakh deaths. In 2019, the number of registered deaths was 76.4 lakh. An increase in the number of deaths in CRS could be due to several factors including increase in population and better reporting.
Figures put out by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare during 2021 showed Covid-19 death toll as 3.3 lakh. The 2021 MCCD data shows 4.13 lakh people died from Covid-19 during that year, an official admission of undercounting of Covid-19 deaths.
According to the Union government, the total number of Covid-19 deaths since the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 is only 5.33 lakh.
The MCCD report itself is based on the 24 lakh total medically certified deaths, which account for only about 23% of the over 1 crore total registered deaths. Yet the report records Covid-19 death figures higher than those published by the Health Ministry.
Both CRS and SRS record births and deaths in a year. While the CRS records registered births and deaths, SRS is a large demographic survey that provides estimates in an attempt to include unregistered births and deaths too.
2021 was the year when India experienced the devastating second wave of Covid-19. The huge number of excess deaths is yet another indication that the official Covid-19 death toll was vastly underestimated, as argued by journalists, researchers, and even the World Health Organisation (WHO), who alleged suppression of data.
The state with highest undercounting of deaths in 2021 was Gujarat. The Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled state recorded close to 5800 Covid-19 deaths in 2021, but the total number of registered deaths was around 1.95 lakh (33 times more), CRS data shows. Three states, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Bengal had the highest differences between total deaths and openly disclosed Covid-19 death toll. The state that showed the lowest difference was Kerala.
As per a dashboard run by Kerala-based volunteer Krishna Prasad, the number of Covid-19 deaths in Gujarat in 2021 is 5,812. However, the state recorded an increase in all-cause mortality (total deaths from any cause) from 4.6 lakh in 2019 to 7.2 lakh in 2021. It saw an additional death of 2.01 lakh in 2021 alone. The volunteer-run dashboard recorded a Covid-19 death toll of 6,927 in Madhya Pradesh in 2021. MP saw a hike of 2 lakh deaths in 2021 compared to its previous year.
Similarly, a January 8, 2022 report by India Today recorded 22,918 deaths in UP due to Covid-19 till then. The excess death registered in UP in 2021 compared to the previous year as per CRS data is 4.78 lakh, which is more than the total medically certified Covid-19 deaths in the whole country.
Spike in death rate
While the overall number of registered deaths had been going up for a while, possibly owing to both population rise and higher registrations, the crude death rate that was flattening as per the Sample Registration System (SRS) Statistical Report 2021 also suddenly shot up in 2021.
The crude death rate (the number of estimated deaths per 1000 population) was as high as 14.9 in 1971. Since 2011, it has been declining steadily, dropping to 6 in 2019 and 2020. In 2021, it surged to 7.5.
If the death rate in 2021 had remained at 6, based on the National Commission on Population’s projections, the estimated deaths would’ve been around 82 lakh, closer to the figures from past years. But at the SRS’ death rate of 7.5 for 2021, the estimated deaths are 1.02 crore, close to the number of deaths actually registered as per the CRS.
This means that in the absence of the pandemic, at the prevailing death rate of 6, India would’ve likely seen 20,44,509, or over 20 lakh fewer deaths in 2021.
In April 2022, the Government of India responded to a New York Times article which said that WHO had to delay releasing its estimate of global death toll for months because of objections from India. India questioned WHO’s methodology, claiming that its mathematical modelling cannot be applied to estimate the death figures for such a vast nation.
When it eventually released the data, WHO estimated that there had been 47 lakh deaths in India directly or indirectly attributable to Covid-19 in 2020 and 2021. In response, India had said that “in view of the availability of authentic data published through Civil Registration System (CRS) by the Registrar General of India (RGI), mathematical models should not be used for projecting excess mortality numbers for India.”
However, the same Registrar General of India’s data for 2021 now indicates excess, unexplained deaths.
