Home Minister Amit Shah mentioned on Tuesday that the government will be making an official announcement on the long-awaited national census. He stated, ”We will declare it very soon,” when questioned about the upcoming decadal census which has been delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Shah along with the Information & Broadcasting Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw was interacting with the media given 100 days of the third tenure of the NDA government under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
While India has been conducting census every 10 years since 1881, the last survey however came in 2011. As per the initial plan the first phase of the census was supposed to begin in April 2020. However, the plan was postponed because of the COVID-19 outbreak. The delay has created many challenges in policy formation as the government continues to depend on outdated data from the 2011 census.
For the first time, the government is planning to introduce India’s first digital census. Citizens will be allowed to self-enumerate. To facilitate the process, a self-enumeration portal has been designed but it has not been launched yet. The updating of the National Population Register (NPR) will also be included in the census. The overall exercise is expected to cost more than Rs 12,000 crore. Citizens will have to reply to questions like household composition, infrastructure, household amenities, access to mobile phones, transportation, internet, and more. For the self-enumeration process, mobile numbers or Aadhaar will be mandatory for the citizens.
The citizens will also be asked what is the cereal they consume in the household, main source of drinking water, main source of lighting, access to toilet, type of toilet, waste water outlet, availability of 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, condition of the house, 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 inputs from PTI)