How many people died in 1971? ("The missing number")

So, how many people died in 1971?

There have been many studies on this (you can search online). However, the researchers have found it difficult to get the most accurate number since the Pakistani army killed a lot of people indiscriminately and arbitrarily, making one layer of mass grave on top of another. (Compare that to the Holocaust, the Nazi's literally recorded almost every Jewish victim that were put in prison and killed thereafter).

I wanted to do some calculation based on the population of Bangladesh in 1970 & 1975. I know that population based estimation cannot guarantee the most accurate number. However, I hope that it will still give you an estimate of the missing number of people in 1971.

Here I go.

1. According to UN estimates [1], Bangladesh population in 1965, 1970, 1975 are as follows:

1965: 57.792 million

1970: 66.881 million

1975: 70.582 million

Do you see that the rate of increase suddenly dropped from 1965-1970 (approx 9 million) to 1970-75 (approx 3.7 million) ? This will be my focus point.

2. According to UN estimates, the rate of population increase in Bangladesh during the same years are as follows:

1955-60 2.85

1960-65 2.856

1965-70 2.92

1970-75 1.077

1975-80 2.66

Again, see the drop in the rate of population icrease

3. I believe that this drop in rate of population comes mostly from three tragic scenarios.

i) 1970 Cyclone in East Pakistan , ii) 1971 war and iii) 1974 famine of Bangladesh.

Now, what would have happened if the rate of population increase followed the trend of 1960-65 and 1965-70? How many people would be in Bangladesh with that trend?

Let's take a middle figure of 65-70 and 75-80's population increase rate. It would be 2.79.

Starting from 1970's population, if rate of increase were 2.79, 1975's population should have been:

66.88 * (1 + (2.79/100) )^5 million = 76.74 million

The actual population at 1975 = 70.582 million

The difference = (76.74 - 70.582) = 6.22 million

Now, WHERE DID 6.22 MILLION PEOPLE GO?

Let's look at cyclone, famine and another important figure.

a) 1970 Cyclone: Up to 0.5 million people died in that cyclone . [3]

b) 1974 famine: Up to 1 million people died in the famine. Approximately, up to 0.5 million people died in the post-famine diseases. [4]

c) Migration of Hindu refugees in India: A huge portion of Hindu refugees stayed in India during 1971. The estimated number is 1.5 million. [5]

d) There is another factor, though (relatively smaller in number).

Migration of the biharis to Pakistan: In 1974, 170 thousand (0.17 million) Biharis went to Pakistan [6]. Add the 150 thousand Bihari's (a neutral estimate) who died in the revenge killing during the aftermath of 1971 war, that number comes to 0.32 million [7]

Overall, add the four above numbers:

0.5 + 1.5 + 1.5 + 0.32 = 3.82

So, approximately 3.82 MILLION PEOPLE DIED/LEFT BANGLADESH during 1970-1975. (I considered the maximum no. for cyclones and famines) Subtract that from the original:

6.22 - 3.82 = 2.4 million

Therefore, approximately, 2.4 million people went missing from our/Bengali's side during the 1971 war (I have already calculated the Bihari's in separate figure).

2.4 MILLION MISSING IN A SPAN OF 9 MONTHS? (Compare that to the killing of 6 million Jewish people by Hitler during 6 years)

http://tinyurl.com/a3lmopz

I do not claim that my number is exact/perfect. But I believe that further work on this arena, by proper statisticians, will give us a much better estimate. Apart from the 1970-75 period, the curve of rate of increase in our population is pretty smooth (law of large numbers normally work, you know). Therefore, a good estimate of the four above factors (cyclone, famine, Hindus staying in India and Biharis migrating to Pakistan) should give you a good estimate of the number of Bengalis/Bangladeshis (accounting for the aboriginals) that died in 1971.

I hope that some statisticians will do further work in this arena. After all, I am a wireless communication researcher, not a statistician .

Additional Comments (added later):

As some people have pointed out, I have not used the effoct of death toll during '70 cyclone and '71 death on the expected number of people in 1975. I agree that this should be taken into account. If we do that, the overall number would come closer to 2 million (from 2.4 million).

However, note that, I used the maximum death toll, among all available sources, for 1970 cyclone (0.5 million) and 1974 famine (1.5 million). If you use some other lower estimates for these two tragic scenarios, the estimated death toll of '71 will increase.

Overall, my objective was not to provide 'a perfect number' for 1971 death toll. Many researchers say that the death toll will range from 1 million to 3 million (http://necrometrics.com/20c1m.htm#Bangladesh). Researchers like R. J. Rummel use 1.5 million [7]. My analysis tells me that the range of 1.5 to 3 million should be correct with a high probability.

Ref:

1. http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Excel-Data/population.htm (Table: total population both sexes)

2. http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Excel-Data/population.htm (Table: rate of natural population increase)

3. http://www.research.noaa.gov/spotlite/2007/spot_cyclone.html

4. http://www.dartmouth.edu/~neudc2012/docs/paper_289.pdf (page - eight)

5. http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/2000/07/30/stories/13300611.htm

6. http://www.scientificjournals.org/journals2008/articles/1313.pdf

7. http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP8.HTM