Union Home Minister Amit Shah announced on Tuesday that the government will "very soon" make an official declaration regarding the country's decadal census, which has been delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Addressing a press conference to mark the completion of 100 days of the NDA government’s third term under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Shah responded to a question about the delayed census, stating, "We will announce it very soon. We will make all the details public when we announce the census." Shah was joined by Information and Broadcasting Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw during the briefing, where they discussed various accomplishments of the government during its current tenure.
Census in India
India has conducted a nationwide census every 10 years since 1881. The first phase of the 2021 census was scheduled to begin on April 1, 2020, but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, the country has yet to initiate the latest census exercise. Shah’s recent comments on the upcoming census come amidst growing political demands for conducting a caste-based census. With no fresh population data available, government agencies are still using figures from the 2011 census to formulate policies and allocate subsidies.
Why is census delayed?
The house listing phase of the census and the exercise to update the National Population Register (NPR) were scheduled to be carried out across the country from April 1 to September 30, 2020, but it was postponed due to the COVID-19 outbreak. The entire census and the NPR exercise is likely to cost the government more than Rs 12,000 crore, according to officials. This exercise, whenever it happens, will be the first digital census giving the citizens an opportunity to self-enumerate.
The NPR has been made compulsory for citizens, who want to exercise the right to fill the census form on their own rather than through government enumerators. For this, the census authority has designed a self-enumeration portal, which is yet to be launched. During self-enumeration, Aadhaar or mobile number will be mandatorily collected.
Questions for public during survey
The Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner had prepared 31 questions to be asked. Those questions include whether a family has a telephone, internet connection, mobile or smartphone, bicycle, scooter or motorcycle or moped, and whether they own a car, jeep or a van. The citizens will also be asked what cereal they consume in the household, the main source of drinking water, the main source of lighting, access to toilet, type of toilet, wastewater outlet, availability of a bathing facility, availability of kitchen and LPG/PNG connection, main fuel used for cooking, availability of radio, transistor, television.
The citizens will also be asked about the predominant material of the floor, wall and roof of the house, the condition of the house, the total number of persons normally residing in the household, whether the head of the household is a woman, whether the head of the household belongs to the Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe, number of dwelling rooms exclusively in possession of the household, number of married couple(s) living in the household among others.
(With PTI inputs)
