• The Registration of Births and Deaths (RBD) Act, 1969 provides for compulsory registration of births and deaths under a uniform law across India.
• The experience of its working underscores the need for amendments.
• The Registration of Births and Deaths (Amendment) Bill, 2023, which recently received presidential assent, addresses this for the first time since its inception.
• The amendment’s objective is to create a National and State level database of registered births and deaths which would help in updating other databases resulting in efficient and transparent delivery of public services and social benefits.

Significance of Databases and Practical Implications

• The Bill makes it compulsory that the Registrar General of India maintains a national-level database of births and deaths.
• The Chief Registrar of births and deaths in every State is required to maintain a State-level database of registered births and deaths ‘using the portal approved by the Registrar General of India’.
• These databases are to provide information to update National Population Register, Aadhaar database, electoral rolls, ration cards, passports, and other databases.

Aadhaar Amendments:

• In the case of birth collecting the Aadhaar number of the parents.
• Nothing is mentioned about the Aadhaar number of the deceased.
• Updating many of the databases would require removing the names of the deceased from the database.
• If the Aadhaar number of a deceased person is not collected, it would be impossible to achieve this objective.
• This reduces the efficient and transparent delivery of public services and social benefits.

Registrar General''s Role:

• The maintenance of the central database is being added to the Registrar General of India’s functions.
• The Chief Registrars are the executive authorities for the matters relating to registration of births and deaths in the States.
• They need to maintain a database for efficient delivery of services of providing birth and death certificates.

National Database Management and Governance:

• The national database is a collection of State-level databases, except for some data items that some States may have in addition to the national standards prescribed by the Registrar General of India.
• It is possible to design a system wherein the required data flow to their databases on a daily basis or even on a real-time basis from the State-level database.
• The Registrar General of India needs to specify the standards for the data structures and transfer protocols.
• Authorities needing data from registered births and deaths database for updates require changes in laws or executive orders.
• The RBD Act requires a provision to share information from the database, but this might not be needed as birth and death registers are public records.
• Suggesting databases for Parliament''s consideration and allowing future additions by the government can undermine Parliament''s authority.
• New additions not approved by Parliament might be riskier than the listed ones.
• For instance, the government could decide to create a list of women with third or higher-order births for the Family Welfare Department''s family planning programs.

Certificate of Cause of Death and its Problems

Issuance of Cause of Death Certificate:

• Currently, the State government could decide that a certificate of cause of death should be issued by the medical practitioner who attended the deceased person so that the certificate can be sent along with the death report.
• Mandatory issuance of the certificate of cause of death varies across States but is generally restricted to deaths in medical institutions.
• The amendments make it compulsory for all deaths in medical institutions.
• These must be reported to the Registrar of Births and Deaths and a duplicate of the certificate must be given to the nearest family member.

Problems with Death Certification:

• Uncertain Diagnoses in Demise: The medical practitioner may not have always arrived at a definite diagnosis before the person died.
• Alignment with World Health Organization (WHO) Guidelines: The forms for cause of death that are being used are in conformity with WHO recommendations.
• If the deceased was attended by a practitioner of the AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, Sowa Rigpa and Homoeopathy) systems of medicine, the cause of death recorded may not be usable for the cause of death statistics since they may not be classifiable under the International Classification of Diseases.
• Variation in Cause of Death: Person can die of an entirely different cause outside a medical facility when the medical practitioner was not available for consultation.
• Contradictions in Legislation: While Section 17 of the Act prevents the inclusion of the cause of death on any issued certificate, it now mandates furnishing the cause of death certificate to the deceased person''s family member.
• Contradictions arises as the cause of death in the death register originates from the same certificate provided by the medical practitioner.

Whenever natural disasters or accidents happen, a number of individuals are declared missing, and some of them might have passed away. Authorities stop looking for them after a while. Yet, the families of these individuals have to wait for seven years before they can apply for a document stating ''presumed dead''. It would be beneficial if there was a rule allowing for the registration of a ''presumed death'' when it''s logically likely that the person perished in the disaster or accident. This adjustment would speed up the process of obtaining death certificates for the affected families.