You cant tell this book by its cover. Or its title. Or its subtitle. Headcount: Memoirs of a Demographer by Ashish Bose,the 80-year-old,grand old man of Indian demography,has been timed just right,in the middle of Indias gigantic census operation. And the striking cover photograph a blurry mass of people to represent Indias multitude appears to set the tone. But the book,by someone who,while working on his doctoral thesis,dreamt census tables,doesnt tell that part of the story effectively enough. Bose,one of Indias best-known social scientists,headed the Population Research Centre at the Institute of Economic Growth in New Delhi for several years,and is the man who coined the popular term BIMARU in reference to the demographically sick states of Bihar,Madhya Pradesh,Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. But in Headcount,its hard not to miss Bose the demographer. This,as Bose says in the preface,is a collection of several episodes in his life: his early,academic days in Delhi Universitys prestigious Gwyer Hall,his meetings with Jawaharlal Nehru,Indira Gandhi and,later,Rajiv Gandhi and Atal Bihari Vajpayee,his disillusionment with the Emergency and the bully Sanjay Gandhi. The writing is unpretentious,just the way Bose would speak vivacious,easy banter. But in the book,the episodes sometimes run into each other,even repeating themselves,something a better editing eye could have caught. The best sections of the book are when Bose speaks of his skill,his ability to look beyond decimals and numbers when it comes to Indias population. He writes of how Indias population control strategy was all wrong because the ministry set targets producing children is not like producing cement or steel where you set targets and how he coined the term BIMARU and convinced Rajiv of the need to focus attention on these four states if Indias population problem was to be addressed. In the process,Bose debunks a few demographic myths. While discussing Indias population problem,one always talks of the success story of Kerala.. My analysis,however,was totally different. I argued Keralas experience could not be replicated in large states like Uttar Pradesh. (because) Kerala accounted for only 3.4 per cent of Indias population and contributed only 2.4 per cent to the absolute increase in Indias population. Bose shares some interesting anecdotes. Like how his masseur,Prabhu Dayal,correctly predicted Indira Gandhis fall in the elections held after Emergency. When Bose asked the masseur if Indira would lose because people were angry with her for imposing Emergency,Dayal said,People like Emergency. Trains run on time. Buses are regular.. Emergency is good. But not nasbandi and that too jabardasti nasbandi (the infamous sterilisation programme that Sanjay Gandhi initiated). Predictive model, Bose calls it. If only there was more of it in the book.
