Centre Begins Preparations for Delayed Census

 New Delhi: The Centre has started preparations for conducting the delayed decadal 2021 census soon. However, a decision to include a column on caste as part of the exercise is yet to be taken, the government sources said here on Sunday.

The last census was held in 2011. The census due in 2021 was postponed because of the Covid 19 pandemic in India, the first phase of which was scheduled to begin on April 1, 2020. India has been conducting the census every 10 years since 1881.

The implementation of the Women’s Reservation Act, which was enacted last year, is also linked to the conduct of the 2021 census, as reserving one-third of seats for women in the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies will come into effect after the delimitation exercise is undertaken.

"This is yet to be decided," the source said when asked about inclusion of a column on caste in the decadal census.

The political parties have been making vociferous demands for conducting a caste census.

In the absence of the latest population data available with the policymakers in the government due to the delayed census, all Central and state agencies are allocating subsidies based on the data of the 2011 census.

The entire census and the National Population Register (NPR) exercise is likely to cost more than Rs 12,000 crores to the government exchequer, the sources said, adding that this time it is going to be the first digital census, giving the citizens an opportunity to self-enumerate.

The house listing phase of the 2021 census and the exercise to update the 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 pandemic.

The NPR has been made compulsory for the citizens, who want to exercise the right to fill out 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.

The office of the registrar general and census commissioner had prepared 31 questions to be asked. The questions include whether a family has a telephone, Internet connection, mobile or smartphone, bicycle, scooter or motorcycle or moped, whether they own a car, jeep or van.

The citizens will also be asked what cereal they consume in their households, their main source of drinking water, their main source of lighting, access to toilet, type of toilet, waste water outlet, availability of bathing facilities, availability of kitchen and LPG/PNG connection, main fuel used for cooking, availability of radio, transistor and 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, the number of dwelling rooms exclusively in possession of the household, and the and the number of married couple(s) living in the household, among others.