The last time India counted its population, the country had 1.21 billion people. The 2011 Census put India’s population at 1,210,854,977, or about 121 crore.
By the time Census 2027 is conducted, India will be a vastly larger and economically different country. United Nations population projections put India’s population at 1.464 billion in 2025, while estimates based on the UN’s World Population Prospects put it at about 1.477 billion in 2026 — meaning India is approaching the 1.5-billion mark.
That makes the information being sought in the latest Census particularly important. The Registrar General of India on Friday, August 14, notified 40 questions for the population enumeration phase of Census 2027. While the biggest headline from the announcement is the inclusion of caste enumeration for all communities for the first time since Independence, the questionnaire also seeks to capture how India’s population has changed economically and socially over the past 15 years.
Caste enumeration was part of the Census conducted in 1931, when India was under British rule. After Independence, the decennial Census continued to enumerate Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, but did not undertake comprehensive caste enumeration for all communities. The Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs (CCPA) approved caste enumeration for Census 2027 on April 30, 2025.
But beyond caste, the questionnaire asks about employment, occupation, migration, education, digital literacy and bank accounts — information that could eventually give policymakers a much more granular picture of India’s economic structure.
A 15-year-old economic snapshot to be replaced
The gap between the 2011 Census and the forthcoming exercise is significant for the economy.
The Census scheduled for 2021 was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Since then, India’s workforce has shifted, migration patterns have evolved, digital payments have expanded, formal banking has widened and education levels have changed.
Yet the Census framework that provides India’s most comprehensive population-level picture still dates back to an economy that looked very different.
Census 2027 will ask whether a person worked during the preceding year, their category of economic activity, occupation, nature of industry, trade or service and class of worker. For marginal, semi-marginal and non-workers, it will also ask whether they are seeking or available for work.
That information could help policymakers understand not simply how many people are working, but what kind of work Indians are doing.
This matters in an economy where headline employment numbers can conceal differences between salaried employment, self-employment, casual work and other forms of economic activity.
Where are India’s workers actually going?
Migration is another part of the questionnaire with significant economic implications.
Respondents will be asked about their birthplace, place of last residence, reason for migration, duration of stay at their present village or town since the last migration and permanent residential address.
These questions could help build a clearer picture of India’s internal migration flows.
Migration is not merely a demographic phenomenon. It is also a labour-market and urbanisation issue. A worker moving from a village to a city changes demand for housing, transport, food, healthcare and other services in the destination. The origin region, meanwhile, may become dependent on remittances.
The Census could help answer which states are major sources of migrant workers, which are attracting them, and whether people are moving primarily for employment, education, marriage or other reasons.
For policymakers, that information could have implications for urban infrastructure, skilling and employment policy.
Bank accounts: Financial inclusion, with a caveat
The questionnaire will also ask respondents about the total number of bank accounts they hold.
That could provide a useful population-level indicator of the reach of formal banking, particularly when combined with information on occupation, education and migration.
India’s financial system has expanded considerably since the 2011 Census, with bank-account ownership, digital payments and direct benefit transfers becoming far more widespread.
But the number of bank accounts does not tell us how frequently they are used, how much money they contain or whether an account is a person’s primary financial relationship.
A person with three bank accounts is not necessarily more financially secure than someone with one.
The Census could therefore tell policymakers more about access to formal banking than household wealth or savings.
Digital literacy becomes an economic question
Census 2027 will also be India’s first fully digital Census, with data collection shifting from traditional paper schedules to mobile-based applications. It also introduces an optional self-enumeration facility, allowing citizens to submit information online before verification by enumerators. The government has described the exercise as the country’s first Census conducted through digital means.
The significance of that shift goes beyond how the Census itself is conducted. The questionnaire’s inclusion of digital literacy is another indication of how economic participation has changed since the last Census.
India’s economic infrastructure is increasingly digital — from UPI payments and online banking to e-commerce and government services. Yet access to technology and the ability to use it effectively are not the same thing.
Once the data becomes available, policymakers could examine how digital literacy varies by age, education, occupation and geography, and how it intersects with access to banking.
That could have implications for financial inclusion, employment and the delivery of government services.
In that sense, Census 2027 may provide an important baseline for understanding whether India’s digital transformation is reaching people evenly, or whether significant gaps remain between those who have access to digital infrastructure and those who can actually use it productively.
What the Census still won’t tell us
The breadth of the questionnaire should not be mistaken for a complete economic database.
The Census will capture whether people work, what kind of work they do, where they live, where they migrated from and whether they have bank accounts. But it will not provide a complete picture of individual income, household expenditure, wealth, productivity or debt.
Similarly, migration data can tell policymakers where people moved and why, but not necessarily how their incomes changed as a result.
The value of Census 2027 will therefore lie partly in combining its data with other official datasets, rather than treating it as a standalone measure of economic wellbeing.
The policy test begins after enumeration
The Census is not simply a statistical exercise. Its data can eventually shape some of the country’s most consequential policy decisions.
One of the biggest political consequences could come through delimitation — the process of redrawing territorial constituencies. The Election Commission says Parliament enacts a Delimitation Act after every Census and that the present constituencies, based on the 2001 Census, are to continue until the first Census after 2026.
That means Census 2027 could become an important statistical foundation for a future exercise that redraws parliamentary and state assembly constituencies and potentially changes the distribution of political representation across states.
The implications go beyond constituency boundaries. A new population count could influence the allocation and design of public programmes, infrastructure planning, healthcare and education requirements, urban development, welfare targeting and the distribution of administrative resources.
A district with a large working-age population but limited employment opportunities presents a different challenge from one steadily losing workers through migration. Similarly, an area with widespread bank-account ownership but low digital literacy may require a different form of financial-inclusion intervention.
The eventual policy impact, however, will depend not merely on the Census being completed, but on how quickly and effectively the data is released, disaggregated and integrated with other official datasets.
India has accumulated a much larger digital and administrative data ecosystem since the last Census. The challenge will be to connect the population database with those other sources while maintaining privacy, confidentiality and statistical reliability.
First fully digital Census
Census 2027 is being conducted in two phases, with a total approved outlay of ₹11,718.24 crore. Phase I — the House Listing and Housing Census — is being conducted between April and September 2026 and gathers information on housing conditions, household amenities and assets. Phase II — Population Enumeration — is scheduled for February 2027 and will capture detailed demographic, socio-economic, cultural, migration and fertility-related information.
For Ladakh and snow-bound non-synchronous areas of Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, the second phase is scheduled for September 2026.
As decided by the CCPA, enumeration of castes will also be undertaken during the second phase.
The scale of the exercise is enormous. More than 30 lakh field functionaries are expected to be involved, while the digital architecture includes mobile applications for enumerators, a central monitoring platform and a self-enumeration facility.
The real economic value of Census 2027, however, will emerge after the counting is over.
India will finally have a population database reflecting a country that has added more than 250 million people since 2011, undergone a rapid expansion in digital and formal financial infrastructure, experienced major shifts in migration and employment, and moved closer to the 1.5-billion population mark.
The 40 questions are therefore not just about counting Indians.
They could help answer a larger question: what does India’s economy actually look like now?