Completeness of death registration in the Civil Registration System, India (2005 to 2015)

In many developing countries including India, the civil registration data are incomplete, inadequate and not timely, therefore, compromising the usefulness of these data. The completeness of registration of death (CoRD) in the Indian Civil Registration System (CRS) was assessed from 2005 to 2015 at State level to understand its current status and trends over time and also to identify gaps in data to improve CRS data quality.

CoRD for each year for each State was calculated from the CRS reports for 2005-2015. Data were analyzed nationally by geographic region and individual State. The availability of CoRD by age group and sex was also reported.

About 40 per cent increase in CoRD was documented for India between 2005 and 2015, with CoRD of 76.6 per cent in 2015. CoRD was >90 per cent in the western and southern regions and the eastern, central and northeastern regions had CoRD lower than the Indian average in 2015. Among the 29 States, 16 (55.2%) State had CoRD >80 per cent and five (17.2%) <50 per cent and 10 States recorded 100 per cent CoRD. Despite the highest per cent increase during 2005-2015 (108.5%), CoRD in Uttar Pradesh was 44.2 per cent in 2015. Varying levels of progress in 2015 were seen between the State with similar CoRD estimates in 2015. Nagaland (-63.3%), Manipur (-33.1%) and Tripura (-30.3%) were the only States that documented a decrease in CoRD during 2005-2015. The age non-availability for India ranged from 37.0 per cent in 2009 to 37.9 per cent in 2015, an average of 41.5 per cent over the seven years and was an average of 35.6 and 36.6 per cent for males and females, respectively. Age was available for all registered deaths only in five (17.2%) of the 29 States in 2009 and four (13.8%) in 2015. Sex non-availability for the recorded deaths was much lower as compared with that for age.

Despite the significant progress made in CoRD in India, critical differences between the States within the CRS remain, with poor availability of reporting by age and sex. Concentrated efforts to assess the strengths and weaknesses at the State level of the CRS processes, quality of data and plausibility of information generated are needed in India.