Bharat Rakshak

I have related the following story more than once on BRF.

When I was a schoolboy I used to travel from Pune (then Poona) to Bangalore by train. Overnight I would see that the countryside was pitch black save for odd bonfires which I thought might be campers. It was years later, in medical college I studied some facts about India that shocked me. All those "campers" represented 80% of the Indian population in rural areas (then 750 million). I was also shocked to learn that 80% of the tonnage of all goods transported by India in those days had at least one leg that was being done by bullock cart. It was easier to improve the bullock cart than replace it. One more thing I learned is that none of these figures is static. They are changing and evolving every day, but are measured only once in a few years. The exact frequency of measurement is less important that realizing that the nation is not a static statistic. The India of 1990 was not the India of 1975 and the Indian of 2005 is not the India of 1990. Only the name is static, unless we decide to change that.

I have picked up the following figures from Wiki. I will indicate other sources as needed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_India

Population: 1,166,079,217 (2009 est)

Birth rate: 22.22 births/1,000 population (2009 est)
Death rate: 6.4 deaths/1,000 population (2009 est)

We have 22 people being born per 1000, and only 6 people dying. So for every 1000 people we have a net increase of 16 people per year.

Rural Population: 72.2%,

750 million Indian live in villages. India is a country made up of predominantly of villagers. We have more people living in villages than the entire population of any other country except China

But hey - we have 400 million urbanites. Even our urban population is higher than the entire population of any other country in the world save China.

(SeeLink: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... population)

Percent of the population under the poverty line: 22% (2006 est.). 250 milllion Indian live below the poverty line. Only the US and China have a population more than 250 million. Lesson: India has more people under the poverty line than the total population of any other country save the US and China


The religion break up of India is as follows:

• Hindus 80.46%
  Muslims 13.43%
  Christians 2.3%
  Sikhs 1.9%
  Buddhists 0.8%
  Jains 0.4%
  Other Religions & Persuasions 0.6%
  Religion not stated 0.1%

Who is producing the most babies?
Total fertility rate
2.72 children born/woman (2009 est.) The TFR (Total number of children born per women) according to Religion in 2001 was :
Hindus — 2.0 Muslims — 2.4 Sikhs — 1.6 Christians — 2.1 Buddhists — 2.1 Jains — 1.4 Animists and Others — 2.99 Tribals — 3.16 Scheduled Castes — 2.89

India has 160 million scheduled castes and about 80 million scheduled tribes.

The fastest reproducers are the STs, followed by the SCs and then Muslims.

Over 300 million Indian are under 14 years of age. They all need to be educated. By the time we celebrate another decade of BR we will have 150 million yahoos more in India unless we can educate and employ these people.

Here is a list of languages:
1 Hindi dialects 41.03%
2 Bengali 8.11%
3 Telugu 7.37%
4 Marathi 6.99%
5 Tamil 5.91%
6 Urdu 5.01%
7 Gujarati 4.48%
8 Kannada 3.69%
9 Malayalam 3.21%
10 Oriya 3.21%
11 Punjabi 2.83%
12 Assamese 1.28%
13 Maithili 1.18%
15 Bhili/Bhilodi 0.95%
14 Santali 0.63%
15 Kashmiri 0.54%
16 Nepali 0.28%
17 Gondi 0.27%
18 Sindhi 0.25%
19 Konkani 0.24%
20 Dogri 0.22%
21 Khandeshi 0.21%
22 Kurukh 0.17%
23 Tulu 0.17%
24 Meitei (Manipuri) 0.14%
25 Bodo 0.13%
26 Khasi 0.112%
27 Mundari 0.105%
28 Ho 0.103%
29 Sanskrit 0.001%


Here is a graph of how India has arrested its population growth


more later...

shiv wrote:

The religion break up of India is as follows:

• Hindus 80.46%
  Muslims 13.43%
  Christians 2.3%
  Sikhs 1.9%
  Buddhists 0.8%
  Jains 0.4%
  Other Religions & Persuasions 0.6%
  Religion not stated 0.1%

Who is producing the most babies?
Total fertility rate
2.72 children born/woman (2009 est.) The TFR (Total number of children born per women) according to Religion in 2001 was :
Hindus — 2.0 Muslims — 2.4 Sikhs — 1.6 Christians — 2.1 Buddhists — 2.1 Jains — 1.4 Animists and Others — 2.99 Tribals — 3.16 Scheduled Castes — 2.89

India has 160 million scheduled castes and about 80 million scheduled tribes.

Shiv, this is a good collection but I've a question above. Is it established method to consider Hindus separate from SC or Animists or Tribals in Indian data? Are not some Tribals Christians or Hindus? In that case is the Hindu data above including the SC or Tribal data or is it separately tallied?

Leaving the first seven states, all the rest are making 2+

Made this gif image. Shows literacy and pop density.

This is common knowledge for Indians, specially the English speaking species. Is this thread trying to educate foreigners?

Posting again on the off chance that some of this is news.

------------------------------------------------------------

The GoI has been focused on ensuring all children attend primary school and stay in school this during decade. Next decade will extend the same policy to the secondary years.

http://www.asercentre.org/

vera_k wrote:This is common knowledge for Indians, specially the English speaking species. Is this thread trying to educate foreigners?

Speak for yourself sir/madam

shiv - your pop curve is interesting; i do note a point of inflexion, therefore there is some good news! i think there was an article in the economist a few months back predicting a stabilisation in the indian population around 2030...

i would urge everyone to post stats and facts on this thread, everyone needs to know these things. and as a cursory scan of BRF shows, there is high variability in the level of knowledge amongst members, in almost any topic. i for one welcome being educated

India's literacy rate is about 60% overall. That means 400 million Indians cannot read or understand the statistics here. Of course the real number of Indians who do not know all this is far higher - so it is complete rubbish to believe that these are facts known to Indians and not to firangis.

As noted above - India currently has 300 million children under the age of 14.

In 10 years at least 100 million of them will be finished with schooling (if any) and looking for jobs. I will have that number to 50 million because 50 million will be girls whose parents just want to get rid of them by marrying them off. That will mean 50 million people potentially looking for jobs in 10 years time.

India has a doctor population ratio of 1 doctor for 1700 people. Most European countries have a doctor for every 300 people. That means India has 450,000 doctors but needs (today) over 3 million. India is currently producing about 20,000 medical graduates a year. In 10 years, accounting for an increase in production India may have produced 300,000 doctors from this bunch. To catch up we have to produce 2.4 million doctors in 10 years, which is ten times the current rate. Given our current system of expensive colleges producing super specialists India will still be far behind in 2020 unless something drastic is done.

India has 125 policemen per lakh population. Developed countries have 225 policemen per lakh. That means we have to create 1 million extra policemen's jobs to catch up. Here is a list of teh current status of police
http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries ... _Ratio.htm

200 million Indians do not have safe drinking water. In any case India is near the bottom of the charts in per capita water availability - see this link where India ranks 123rd out of 169 countries
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_w ... ailability

Indians use 200 million tons of firewood per year for cooking alone. Mostly in rural areas. In urban areas about 30% use LPG (17%) and or Kerosene. But rural households use firewood or other biomass and that adds massively to deforestation, pollution, lung disease among woman and low weight babies.

India has about 640,000 villages, but 80,000 of them do not have electricity. About 400 million Indian do not have access to regular reliable electric power supply. Needles to say that this also means that refrigeration for food and medicines is absent. Perishables will rot soon and diabetics get no insulin.

Here is yet another urgent priority for India:

http://www.gits4u.com/envo/envo4.htm

a rapidly growing population that has taken the country from 300 million people in 1947 to more than one billion people today is putting a strain on the environment, infrastructure, and the country’s natural resources. Industrial pollution, soil erosion, deforestation, rapid industrialization, urbanization, and land degradation are all worsening problems

About 45 per cent of India's land is degraded, air pollution is increasing in all its cities, it is losing its rare plants and animals more rapidly than before and about one-third of its urban population now lives in slums, says the State of Environment Report India 2009 brought out by the government.

Eighty-five industrial clusters in India are toxic: 85% of big industrial clusters in India are health hazards as air, water and land pollution levels are not fit for human habitants.
<snip>
the environmental pollution levels in 10 major industrial hubs had reached a “very alarmingly high” level. This list includes Ankleshwar and Vapi in Gujarat , Ghaziabad and Singrauli in Uttar
Pradesh, Korba (Chhattisgarh), Chandrapur (Maharashtra), Ludhiana (Punjab), Vellore (Tamil Nadu), Bhiwadi (Rajasthan) and Angul Talcher (Orissa).

India’s environmental problems are exacerbated by its heavy reliance on coal for power generation. Coal supplies more than half of the country’s energy needs and is used for nearly three-quarters of electricity generation
<snip>
Air quality is worst in the big cities like Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, etc.
Bangalore holds the title of being the asthma capital of the country. Studies estimate that 10 per cent of Bangalore’s 60 lakh population and over 50 per cent of its children below 18 years suffer from air pollution- related ailments.
<snip>
The effects of air pollution are obvious: rice crop yields in southern India are falling as brown clouds block out more and more sunlight.
.

Fully 80 percent of urban waste in India ends up in the country's rivers, and unchecked urban growth across the country combined with poor government oversight means the problem is only getting worse. A growing number of bodies of water in India are unfit for human use, and in the River Ganga, holy to the country's 82 percent Hindu majority, is dying slowly due to unchecked pollution.

New Delhi's body of water is little more than a flowing garbage dump, with fully 57 percent of the city's waste finding its way to the Yamuna. It is that three billion liters of waste are pumped into Delhi's Yamuna (River Yamuna) each day. Only 55 percent of the 15 million Delhi residents are connected to the city's sewage system. The remainder flush their bath water, waste water and just about everything else down pipes and into drains, most of them empty into the Yamuna. According to the Centre for Science and Environment, between 75 and 80 percent of the river's pollution is the result of raw sewage. Combined with industrial runoff, the garbage thrown into the river and it totals over 3 billion liters of waste per day. Nearly 20 billion rupees, or almost US $500 million, has been spent on various clean up efforts.
The frothy brew is so glaring that it can be viewed on Google Earth.
Much of the river pollution problem in India comes from untreated sewage. Samples taken recently from the Ganges River near Varanasi show that levels of fecal coliform, a dangerous bacterium that comes from untreated sewage, were some 3,000 percent higher than what is considered safe for bathing.

viv wrote: Shiv, this is a good collection but I've a question above. Is it established method to consider Hindus separate from SC or Animists or Tribals in Indian data? Are not some Tribals Christians or Hindus? In that case is the Hindu data above including the SC or Tribal data or is it separately tallied?

This would require some digging. Why don't you Google/Bing for info and see what you come up with. I am sure many of us would be grateful for any information you can dredge up on the issue.

Very pertinent thread, thanks Shiv!

The District Information System for Education (DISE) has a lot of data on their site
http://www.dise.in

eg for various literacy rates see
http://www.dise.in/webpages/poptabs.htm

District Report Cards
Vol 1, 371 pages, 10MB
http://www.dise.in/downloads/DRC%202007 ... Vol-I).pdf
Vol 2, 335 pages, 8MB
http://www.dise.in/downloads/DRC%202007 ... ol-II).pdf

Great thread, Shiv.

One statistic that caught me by surprise is Bengali speakers having 8.11% of India's population, which did not gel with the land ratio of West Bengal. Looked up Wiki, and found that WB has 2.7% of India's land area but supports 7.8% of the population. Wow - you learn something new every day!

Another important point is lack of justice.

The number of judges, per million people, are

• 107 USA
• 75.02 Canada
• 57.07 Australia
• 50.09 UK
• 10.05 India

The data is a few years old,
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/op/2002/0 ... 060200.htm

btw, there are apparently 210 thousand judges in China (ratio above 160 ) though the Chief Grand Justice says:

"Courts have often been taken as branches of the government, and judges viewed as civil servants who have to follow orders from superiors, which prevents them from exercising mandated legal duties like other members of the judiciary,"

http://www.china.org.cn/english/2002/Jul/36380.htm

Shiv ji's population graph is an interesting representation.

First, such a steady growth implies basic survivality conditions have kept pace with population growth. If there were not sufficient food/health care then that growth would not have been possible.

Second, future population growth will depend strongly on several concurrent factors - female fertility (and factors that affect that - like female literacy, age at marriage, female autonomy, avaialbility of contraceptive methods and their adaption, etc), food production, public health, and sex-ratio - apart from cultural beliefs/notions about reproductivity/family size. The current proportion of popn below 15 years and those above 65 are also important.

It is difficult to say at this point whether Indian population will stabilize by 2030. Projections exist of reaching 1.4 billion by 2050.

Here is a little pointer to what may actually help : http://www.jstor.org/pss/2174910

Some more population and growth statitics can be found here ..

http://esa.un.org/unpp/index.asp?panel=1

Not true Bpathi ji.

The poulation explosions in Palastinian camps after Israel occupation of West Bank, Jerusalem, Afghans in TSP after Sovet Invasion, indicate that More babies are produced when you share tents...

I am in India , Ihave a feeling looking at things
"Something gotta give" if the current collapse of infrastructure, Governence, Soren And Tiwari give hope (, even if you are convicted criminal you can get ahead, even if you are past 80 you still can make it two sum), and complete collapse of basic civic sense and civic responsibility.

Sad Sad stae of affairs...

(we are working over time to prove Winston Churchill is after all right, Not fit to rule only fit to be ruled)

Arjun wrote:Great thread, Shiv.

One statistic that caught me by surprise is Bengali speakers having 8.11% of India's population, which did not gel with the land ratio of West Bengal. Looked up Wiki, and found that WB has 2.7% of India's land area but supports 7.8% of the population. Wow - you learn something new every day!

Does it include Bangladeshis?

Umrao Das ji,
I accept your pointer. But even then they (the Palestinians holed up in Gaza) must be getting some minimal stuff to keep all those hungry newborns actually alive to really add to the population.

Food supply is a critical issue. Especially the capacity of the land to increase production any further on a long term maintainability basis. Some countries have started buying up/leasing productive land of other countries. I don't know whether that can be on the cards.

a new green revolution, proper collection and distribution of fresh water and staving off adverse effects of rising sea levels will be very high on the national agenda for the coming half century

Mahendra wrote:

Arjun wrote:Great thread, Shiv.

One statistic that caught me by surprise is Bengali speakers having 8.11% of India's population, which did not gel with the land ratio of West Bengal. Looked up Wiki, and found that WB has 2.7% of India's land area but supports 7.8% of the population. Wow - you learn something new every day!

Does it include Bangladeshis?

The statistics are based on 2001 census. Government estimates this year talk of 2 Cr illegal Bangladeshi migrants - 2% of India's population. How much of this was included in the government census and how much is outside of it - does not seem to be clear.

Anyway, I would rather this thread be clear of any politically sensitive discussions.

Arjun wrote:Great thread, Shiv.

One statistic that caught me by surprise is Bengali speakers having 8.11% of India's population, which did not gel with the land ratio of West Bengal. Looked up Wiki, and found that WB has 2.7% of India's land area but supports 7.8% of the population. Wow - you learn something new every day!

the bengal delta is one of the most fertile landmasses in the world which allows it to support a large number of people. no wonder that now, as well as historically it was always been very densely populated.

Mahendra wrote: Does it include Bangladeshis?

probably, those that have received ration cards and like from certain political parties.

Saw a post above on the lack of justice, which reminded me of the stats on prison population per 100,000 people.

Link

Australia 116
Bangladesh 54
Brazil 133
China 111
India 28
Norway 59
Pakistan 51
Sri Lanka 100
Saudi Arabia 110
UK 130
US 686

Compared to India, the US looks like a police state. But perhaps that would be the model to follow to inculcate civic sense and reduce brazen criminal behaviour. Expanding the number of prisoners would also be a major employment generator.

shiv wrote:

viv wrote: Shiv, this is a good collection but I've a question above. Is it established method to consider Hindus separate from SC or Animists or Tribals in Indian data? Are not some Tribals Christians or Hindus? In that case is the Hindu data above including the SC or Tribal data or is it separately tallied?

This would require some digging. Why don't you Google/Bing for info and see what you come up with. I am sure many of us would be grateful for any information you can dredge up on the issue.

"Animists", and SCs for the most part in India come under the ubiquotous umbrella of hindu, according to constitution - thus part of hindu civil law.

If he is a christian tribal, he is a christian tribal, not a hindu. SC by definition has to be hindu or buddhist or jain, i.e. one from a indic religion (or sikh not sure). If he converts he loses his status. Thus the word dalit christian is "nonsense" constitutionally.

P.s: I hate the word animists and the connotations it brings.

P.s: I hate the word animists and the connotations it brings.

why ?

Shiv,

regarding the fertility rates. Note the states with the highest fertility rates. Any words come to mind? "BIMARU" anyone? It is this statistic which gave it the particular title. So unfortunately 95% of the above might be news to people who do not read news daily, but the popular representations have captured most of this data in the minds in various forms.

For example, take the differing fertility rates and how they are concentrated in one area. Now map it with the democracy, where x no. of voters = y no. of seats. Will this not screw the "advanced" states? The Indian parliament has treated this problem in a very PVNR way, postpone Thus the number of MP seats in a states are fixed at the number of seats it had around 1980 and will remain so until 2025.

Rahul M wrote:

P.s: I hate the word animists and the connotations it brings.

why ?

Well the word animal from which it derives brings to me personally an image of brute, unsophisticated. So I try to avoid it.

I refuse to believe that religious statistic there saying Indian Christian are just 2.3% This was probably based on a 40 year old census.

IMO, Tamilnadu is nothing less than 20% Christians. Kerala is somewhere in the 40%, Karnataka is close to 15-20%. Same in AP.

They keep using that 2% to make sure there is no panic. How long are they going to use this strategy?

South Korea was less than 2% Christians 40 years ago. Today its over 45%. Same thing is happening in India for better or for worse.

ravi_ku wrote: Well the word animal from which it derives brings to me personally an image of brute, unsophisticated. So I try to avoid it.

wrong thread so I'll be brief. please reply elsewhere. isn't this what forum gurus call fractal recursivity ? what's inherently bad in worshiping nature spirits ? hinduism itself is animistic in many aspects.

Hi, this is my first post in this forum.

Just wanted to point out that the data regarding the Total Fertility Rate is erroneous.

The correct data from http://censusindia.gov.in/Data_Products ... F9_F10.pdf is:


Social group Total Rural Urban
All population 2.52 2.83 1.79
Scheduled Castes 2.89 3.10 2.13
Scheduled Tribes 3.16 3.26 2.22
Hindu 2.47 2.77 1.72
Muslim 3.06 3.52 2.29
Christian 2.06 2.37 1.53
Sikh 1.86 2.00 1.49
Buddhist 2.29 2.65 1.80
Jain 1.50 1.90 1.39
Other R.C. 2.99 3.11 2.00


As far as fertility goes, ST > Muslims > SC. There is a huge gap between Hindu and Muslim fertility.

username changed to saket,
Rahul.

Rahul M wrote: wrong thread so I'll be brief. please reply elsewhere. isn't this what forum gurus call fractal recursivity ? what's inherently bad in worshiping nature spirits ? hinduism itself is animistic in many aspects.

putting reply in nukkad

Something piqued my interest, I did not know that Sikh fertility is among the lowest in India. Per Shiv & Saket's data, it is higher only than the Jain's. Interesting.

Does all this data match with up with G. Subramanian's data?

I don't follow the argument that people will have less children if their circumstances are difficult. On the contrary, they will do the opposite - have as many kids as possible so as to improve the odds that at least some have a chance of survival and a better life. Once their own circumstances improve significantly, their desire for personal gratification will supercede their desire to improve the odds of survival of the next generation, and population growth will fall. While this may seem contrarian, this has been the case in every urbanized developed society. The surefire way to stabilize Indian population growth by non-invasive means is to encourage rapid economic growth and getting women into the workfoce, driving urbanization and nuclearization of families.

surinder wrote:Something piqued my interest, I did not know that Sikh fertility is among the lowest in India. Per Shiv & Saket's data, it is higher only than the Jain's. Interesting.

Does all this data match with up with G. Subramanian's data?

the reason being that more prosperous a community lower is its fertility rate. I think if we had data for the parsee community it would be the lowest in India.

^^^^ Education and per capita are the best form of birth control. However there are anomalies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... birth_rate
CIA Factbook - 2009
i.e.,
34 Oman 34.79
46 Iraq 30.10
49 Saudi Arabia 28.55
54 Pakistan 27.62
61 Philippines 26.01
82 India 21.76

They have equal to or above (significantly) Indias per capita.

Saudi Arabia. This country has some of the world’s fastest population growth, with a birth rate of 4.5 (down from 5.7 in 2003). Its population is likely to more than double by 2050, from 24.6 million to 49.5 million. Saudi Arabia has a very young citizenry, with 43 percent under the age of 15—a factor that increases population momentum. Only 32 percent of married women use contraceptives, and abortion is illegal except for special cases.

Suraj wrote:I don't follow the argument that people will have less children if their circumstances are difficult. On the contrary, they will do the opposite - have as many kids as possible so as to improve the odds that at least some have a chance of survival and a better life. Once their own circumstances improve significantly, their desire for personal gratification will supercede their desire to improve the odds of survival of the next generation, and population growth will fall.

Absolutely right. Birth-rates are proverbially the highest in wartime... couples start reproducing more intently as if in atavistic response to a conceivably existential threat against the group.

The "baby boomers" of the USA are a case in point. The "baby boom" occurred during WW2 when the birth rate skyrocketed. Today this large population is retiring from the workforce and placing substantial strain on GOTUS programs of medicare and social security.

The Palestinian notion of the womb as a weapon of jihad also reflects another aspect of the same phenomenon.

Indeed, I wonder if the constant propaganda of "Islam khatrein me hai" purveyed by Muslim clerics around the world, isn't directly related to fostering a constant, pervasive fear of communal extinction... however unjustified it may be... so that Muslim populations respond by having more children and expanding themselves.

Birth rates do increase in response to stressors, but of course (as Brihaspatiji pointed out) this would not translate to an increase in population if the stressors were so great as to directly raise infant and child mortality to overwhelming levels.

^^Rahul, not quite true in the case of Muslims.
As one can see, the growth rate of Muslims is higher than SCs and I dont believe for a second that SCs are more prosperous than Muslims.
Secondly, even in states where Muslims are better or as well off as Hindus, their growth rate is more. Look up figures for Kerala or Gujarat for example. It is clearly a cultural problem in Islam, but the media will never point out this obvious fact.

Rahul M wrote:

surinder wrote:Something piqued my interest, I did not know that Sikh fertility is among the lowest in India. Per Shiv & Saket's data, it is higher only than the Jain's. Interesting.

Does all this data match with up with G. Subramanian's data?

the reason being that more prosperous a community lower is its fertility rate. I think if we had data for the parsee community it would be the lowest in India.

Parsis are actually the world's only religious community with a negative growth rate. Their numbers are actually declining. However, more than economic status this can be attributed to their specific social norms.

Miscegenation with other faiths is very strongly discouraged, which has two demographic consequences. One, the children of a Parsi woman married to a non-Parsi man are not considered Parsi and are ineligible for Navjot (initiation) etc. Parsi men (as men in all communities) tend to be less attached to the maintenance of tradition (at a household/family level) than women; so Parsi men marrying outside the faith are less likely to want to carry on religious traditions in their families than women-- all the ones I know who married outside the community have not bothered to initiate their kids with Navjot. Compare this with Jews, where the qualifying factor to admit children from interfaith marriages into Judaism is that their *mother* is Jewish.

Secondly, the tendency of interbreeding has sorely depleted the gene pool and genetic defects are rife among the Parsi population... contributing even further to the decline in birth rates.

^^^^
Parsis marry very late and also a contributing factor to -ve growth rate. Any specific details about Bohra Muslims as they have similarities in lifestyle to that of parsis

Strictly speaking, no need to be upset over "animism". It is formally derived from Latin "anima" meaning soul-life-force. Technically it implies belief in the possibility of soul existing in non-humans.

All this argument about material upliftment and state sponsored resource subsidization reducing fertility actually breaks down in certain real cases. Ultra-orthodox communities in most places actually show higher fertility rates compared to the less orthodox versions of the same community. It is an old puzzle of ordinary price theory. There are some rational choice theory based studies that show - that when the state, directly or indirectly subsidizes the community - the fertility rate rises with accompanied increase in orthodoxy.

http://dss.ucsd.edu/~elib/sns.pdf

[...] club good model. Club members benefit from access to a remarkably generous mutual insurance network based on religiously motivated charitable acts. Mutual acts of charity provide the social interaction nature of the model. Access to mutual insurance is excludable, making it a club good. Religious prohibitions can be understood as an extreme tax on secular activity outside the club which substitutes for charitable activity within the club. A religious community lacking tax authority or unable to subsidize this activity may choose prohibitions to increase charitable activity among members.

Sabbath observance and dietary restrictions, for instance, can be rationalized with that approach. In this context the increased stringency of religious practice is an efficient communal response to rising real wages and to increased external subsidies. Increased fertility can be explained as an interaction of efficient prohibitions and increased
subsidies. As subsidies increase the value of community services offered to members, a club concerned with attrition can afford to impose higher effective taxes through prohibitions. Thus subsidies reduce real wages, causing women to reduce market activity in favor of household activity, particularly childbearing. This “subsidized prohibition” mechanism runs Becker’s fertility transition argument in reverse.

I have omitted ref to the actual community studied, and the paper also indicates studies proposed in the Indian context. Please take this as just intro to an academic model which appears to explain the puzzle and without any insinuation on any community. There are similar sociological research, but with more explicit "connections" to orthodox groups which I am therfore omitting from here.