New Delhi, June 14 -- The Sample Registration System (SRS) is considered to be the most authoritative statistical source on births and mortality in India, especially the latter. However, the 2022 SRS numbers on deaths, which were released on June 12, are quite perplexing for two reasons. One, they suggest that significantly more under-25 people died in 2022 than not just in 2021 but also on average in the three years before the Covid-19 pandemic. Two, this trend is in contrast with what is seen in the total registered deaths as seen in the Civil Registration System (CRS) data for 2022. The SRS is the official source of crude death rate (CDR) or number of deaths per thousand population in India. It is conducted by the Registrar General of In...