BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS

The determination of increase or decrease in population of different communities or races living in Sri Lanka would be based on the actual census results and pre-emptive decisions just listing to gossips talks going on in village tea boutiques is unreasonable and misleading. Sinhala community is frequently disturbed by fabricated information that Sinhala people in the country is becoming invisible without submitting scientific facts or reasons for it.  This type of stupid information was spread during the LTTE war as strategic maneuvring by some Boeotia LTTE theorists, who followed the gobbles methods intending to achieving objectives. A similar type of methods was used by Yahapalana strategists during the presidential election in 2015 and now they are hiding without information to prove the maneuvring of them. The Census and Statistics Department of Sri Lanka conducts a detailed census and published actual statistics.  These statics are 99.5% accurate and from 1881 data has already published. From 1881 to 1921 population statistics may have errors as the investigators (data collectors) had to face various difficulties when they were collecting data due to several reasons.  In the early period, data collectors had not understood and the responsibility of the role and this situation would have contributed to generate errors in the data collection process.

The following were could be considered as major reasons to incur errors in the process.

• In the data collection process, an actual number of people in a family was not recorded in the data forms or twice countered when family members did not give accurate information to data collectors, but such errors are corrected by the authority using statistical techniques at an acceptable level.  There was evidence that instead of actual family members others were provided information to census officers.
• There may be wilful errors incurred if investigators do not perform the job not visiting families or ignoring to visit families due to difficulties to visit families due to remoteness they are living.
• Counting certain communities which have a life of migrating from one place to another for a shorter period might ignore the accurate counting of them and correct information of them may not come to data forms.  The statistics in these communities are negligible.

As I have participated as a data collector in 1971 census, I noticed the possibilities to ignore or estimate the number of members in a family by rural officers (Grama Niladari) rather than counting an actual population of families. However, the department uses appropriate statistical techniques to correct such errors and this type mistakes be possible in any country and these are not considered evidence that the survey results were not accurate.

According to published statistics recorded Sinhala population from 1891 to 2012 is given below.

Year                     No                        %

1891                     2041200               67.86%

1901                     2330800               65.36%

1911                     2715500               66.13%

1921                     3016200               67.05%

1931                     3473000               65.45%

1946                     4620500               69.41%

1953                     5616700               69.36%

1963                     7512900               71.00%

1971                     9131241               71.96

1981                     10979561             73.95%

2001                     Not available

2011                     15250081             74.90%

When examining the statistics, it seems that Sinhala population has been increased, but the percentage of Sinhala population contributing to the total population has been the varied result of changes of the volume of other communities and in 2011, Sinhala population recorded as 74.90%, which might be increased to 77.00% in 2020. The truth is that no one can stop the increase in Sinhala population and it would be an impossible task.  Therefore, people should not trust gossip talks going on in village tea boutiques.  Sinhala people must act as an intelligent community.

Some people spread information that Muslim population increases faster than other communities, it may contain true information when looking at population statistics, however, we cannot determine it without the growth rate of each community. The growth rate of each community means the difference between birth rate and the death rate of each community and the difference between birth rate and death rare is considered as the rate of growth.  I have no idea whether Sri Lanka calculates the growth rate of each community.