The census juggernaut is set to roll at long last
The Government of India has announced plans to conduct the Census in 2027, with the intent notified in the Gazette on June 16. Census 2027 will be conducted in two phases: Phase I will be House Listing and Housing Census, scheduled from April to September 2026 and Phase II will be Population Enumeration, set for February 2027. In the recent past, several state governments went about the census process in their own respective style. The state governments of Bihar and Telangana had taken the lead in this regard while Odisha and Andhra Pradesh followed suit. In fact, Bihar and Telangana governments have got their respective surveys approved by the State legislatures.
The case of Karnataka is peculiar in this regard. It started the exercise way back in 2015 but could not take it to its logical end. It was only this April that the report was passed by the State Assembly. Prof K Viyyanna Rao, former Vice-Chancellor of Acharya Nagarjuna University points out rightly: ‘It is known that census is the most credible source of demography that India can depend upon and help in policy formulation. All welfare and other schemes are based on the authentic sources of data pertaining to the diverse sections of the society. India being wedded to the principles of the socialistic pattern of society has no other way, except striving to uplift most masses. Such being the significance of the exercise, the nation cannot afford to lose any further time in the conduct of the census.’
Prof Rao says: ‘In view of the ample time available before the next general elections, the Centre may have taken a decision to initiate the process immediately and complete the same soon; lest it becomes impossible to arrest the speculation and political heat.’ The conduct of the census has a very interesting history. Although the Census of 1871 is the first Modern Census of India under the British regime; the initiations started many decades ago. First records of attempts to assess population are found in Calcutta and Benaras in 1800. In 1814-15 a Census was conducted in the “Island of Bombay”, counting the population of the Fort as well as the rest of the residential areas in the island. In the subsequent years, in British Provinces, Princely states and several local governments conducted their own procedures of census taking, chiefly by the police and chowkidars. Census in Calcutta city in 1821, 1831, 1837, 1850, 1866 and so on, in Bombay in 1833, 1844, 1849 and 1864; Madras in 1822, 1863, 1867, Punjab in 1855, 1868, and Oudh in 1869 are some of the examples of such efforts.
The first decennial Census in independent India was conducted from February 9-28, 1951 (with Revisional Round from March 1-3) in extended de-facto method. This Census founded a crucial milestone in creating a new era of statistical data collection. Despite the enormous volume of jurisdictional changes owing to partition, millions of displaced populations, this Census created an outstanding pathway for conducting Census in many years to come.
After handover of power, the Government of India enacted the permanent Census Act in 1948 on the Statute Book and permanent Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India was established as a “unified organisation to effect continuous improvement over the whole field of population data including the Census and vital statistics and to conduct experiments in sampling which would reduce not only the elaboration of these operations but also the cost.