Prof. P.N. Mari Bhat giving a lecture at a recent ESCAP-UNFPA training workshop held at IIPS

OBITUARY:Sudden demise of Prof. P.N. Mari Bhat, head of IIPS

It is with great grief and sorrow that the faculty, staff and students of the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) announced the demise of Mr. P.N. Mari Bhat, Director and Senior Professor, in Mumbai on 30 July 2007.
Prof. P.N. Bhat died of a heart attack, at age 56. He was one of India’s leading demographers.

Prof. P.N. Bhat had joined IIPS --India’s premier demographic teaching and research institute -- in June 2005, after being a Professor at the Delhi-based Institute for Economic Growth and having excelled in conducting various creative research including on religious differentials in fertility and mortality in India. He had published numerous papers in leading population journals.

Mr. Bhat had also served in several well-known research institutions in India and had been a visiting research scholar in distinguished universities such as Harvard University and the Universities of Minnesota and Manitoba. He had provided consultancy services to the United Nations Population Division and Statistic Division, as well as UNFPA, WHO, Johns Hopkins University, the London School of Economics and a few other international organizations.

Prof. Bhat had obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics from the University of Mysore in India in 1970 and his first Master’s degree in Psychology from Andhra University in 1972. He turned to the field of population, enrolling in IIPS’ Diploma in Population Studies in 1975. He completed a second Master’s degree in Demography in 1981 and a PhD in Demography from the University of Pennsylvania, United States, in 1987.

As explained by Senior Social Scientist Monica Das Gupta in an article entitled “Using facts to counter propaganda – P.N. Mari Bhat (1951-2007)”, Prof. Bhat “chose to live life on his own terms, focusing his high level of energy and passion solely on the work he wanted to do, avoiding other job-related distractions. It also meant living and working in India, and contributing to debates in the country in a hands-on fashion”.

“The most creative phase of his career began when he moved to the quiet life of a pure researcher, as Director of the Population Research Centre in Dharwad (1991-1997). His publications during this phase are peppered with papers exploring new issues. His approach to such research was typically iconoclastic. In a paper co-authored with Irudaya Rajan, he added a twist to the accepted wisdom that women have more autonomy in south India than in the north, Ms. Das Gupta noted.

“Other fascinating work during this period includes an analysis of how changing availability of spouses may have contributed to rises in dowry payments over the twentieth century in India”, she said. Ms. Das Gupta also referred to some of Prof. Bhat’s other creative research, in particular, on the fiercely debated topic of religious differentials in fertility and mortality in India.

“This is a highly politicized subject on which much baseless propaganda is disseminated. Mari countered such propaganda with an authoritative assessment of exactly how much of a differential there is between religious groups in their fertility levels, and how this varies over time and between states. His data show that Muslims in India do indeed have higher fertility than Hindus, but that this gap is shrinking quite rapidly. By the time India’s population growth stabilizes by the mid-21st century, the proportion of Muslims will have increased by 18 per cent of the total population – certainly higher than that of today, but a far cry from the claims of fear-mongers”, Ms. Das Gupta noted.
In the wake of IIPS Golden Jubilee celebrated in December 2006, the January-February 2007 issue of Population Headliners (No. 316) had published an interview with Prof. Bhat, in which he looked back at the Institute’s contribution to the advancement of population issues in the region and shared his views on the population issues of great concern in India at the moment.

Prof. P.N. Mari Bhat will be greatly missed and his demise is a severe blow to the demographic profession. Prof. Bhat is survived by his wife and two daughters.