Dates Set for First Digital Indian Census

The Indian government has published a schedule for conducting its 16th national Census, which will take place some five to six years late. The operation, which was originally postponed due to the pandemic, will be the first conducted digitally, and the first since independence to include questions on caste.

India's Union Ministry of Home Affairs announced last week that the Census will be completed by 1st March 2027. The starting dates for each of the two parts of the process - a house listing and schedule, followed by population count - are due to be announced this Sunday, 16th June.

The Census Act of 1948 and Census Rules of 1990 specify that India, like other countries, will conduct a Census every ten years. The country's first, non-synchronous Census was carried out in 1872 under British rule, and the first complete synchronous Census in 1881. The new count will be the 8th since the country's independence in 1947.

The government says it plans to recruit and train around 3 million enumerators, many of them state school teachers, to use the mobile application which will replace paper as the data collection medium. The announcement made no mention of updating the National Population Register (NPR), which currently includes some 1.19bn residents and was slated for revision during the first phase of the planned 2021 census.

Among other uses, the Census will be used to redraw constituency boundaries for elections, arguably long overdue: current boundaries are based on data from the 1971 survey.

Thanks to www.thehindu.com and www.insightsonindia.com for information in the above.