Provisions of NPR put citizens on tenterhooks

Even as protests spread all across the country against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), 2019, and the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC), the government of India gave its go-ahead to undertake the country's 16th decadal census exercise to count the country's population.

The 2011 census had pegged India's population at 1.21 billion — a 17.6% rise from 2001. A simultaneous exercise to prepare the National Population Register (NPR) will also be undertaken in April 2020. The Cabinet has allocated Rs 13,000 crore ($1.8 billion) for updating the census and the NPR.

The NPR, started in 2010, was last updated in 2015, following a door-to-door exercise by officials under the then United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. By no yard stick the census could be termed as 'same' as NPR.

The NPR is distinct from the census. The register's objective, according to the Censusindia website, is to create "a comprehensive identity database in the country with full identification and other details by registering each and every usual resident in the country". The idea behind NPR is to better target benefits and services by preventing identity fraud.

The census, on the other hand, collects data on population, economy activity, social and cultural aspects, migration and demography, down to the lowest administrative level. Though the Union Home Minister went on air to claim that the NPR had begun during the former UPA regime itself and hence no one need to brook any apprehensions on the same, this one has incorporated certain additional features this time leading to a controversy.

The NPR will be a database generated through house-to-house enumeration during the "house-listing" phase of the census, which is held once in 10 years and will be done next in 2021. It defines a "usual resident" as a person who has resided in a place for six months or more and intends to reside there for another six months or more.

"We are launching a massive programme for national census which happens every 10 years. 2021 is the census year. Every house will be mapped and listed between April and September 2020, and in February 2021 headcount will be done," said Prakash Javadekar, Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting, adding that the exercise was being undertaken to ensure that "all beneficiaries of schemes such as Ayushman Bharat and Ujjwala are accounted for and receive the benefits.

The Minister also reiterated that a cleaner and more streamlined census would prepare the ground for compiling data for NPR, adding that the register had the potential to club all other forms of identification such as Aadhaar, permanent account number (PAN), driving license and electoral photo identity card under one platform. Here is the dividing line.

BJP's brute majority in Parliament has forced the hapless Opposition to the streets. If only the Union Home Minister were not to repeatedly affirm that NRC would be implemented throughout the country and if only the NRC were not to happen in Assam and if only the Centre were to say that the citizenship was to be extended to all persecuted from all neighbouring countries, things would have been different. Alas it did not happen. One could only say "tamasoma jyotirgamaya…'