Can a nation govern effectively without knowing who its people are? Uncover why India’s census has been delayed for over a decade, the hidden costs of missing data, and whether politics is steering the silence.
Introduction to Census in India
What is a census?
A census counts the population of a nation, state, or other geographic region and records information about its characteristics, such as age, sex, and occupation. National governments usually conduct censuses every five to ten years, as the United Nations recommends. It is known as the “Backbone of Policy-making.” Let’s dive deep into the topic to understand the reason better.
India and the Census
In India, the Government of India (GoI) enacted the Census Act in 1948. While it authorizes the government to conduct censuses as needed, it does not mandate a specific interval. Due to British influence, the census has been conducted every 10 years since 1951.
The history of the Indian Census began in 1872 under Viceroy Lord Mayo, the first complete census was taken in 1872. Post-1949, it has been conducted by the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India under the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India.
The last census was done in 2011. However, the census scheduled for 2021 was not held due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Importance of Census
A country spends billions of dollars to conduct a census, generally, after a fixed interval of time, as the census activity is vital for the governance and evaluation of where the country is heading. There are several other needs as listed below:
- Better Governance: Most crucially, the data collected in the census is used for administration, planning, and policy-making within the country.
- Source of Information: The biggest source of various types of information on the characteristics of people living in India. The researchers and demographers use this census data to analyze and determine growth and trends in the population and take action accordingly.
- Business: Helpful for business purposes as the business industries can analyze the data for their better development.
- Providing Incentives: The government of India allocates various grants and provides different incentives to the states according to census data.
- Preparing Budget: The census data greatly helps in the allocation of the budget for the next period for the development of the country.
The 2011 Census: Last Official Census
The 2011 Census of India, the 15th census and 7th since independence, had a few key highlights as follows:
Population Trends
- India’s total population in 2011 was 121.06 crore.
- Sex Ratio: 943 females per 1,000 males (higher in rural areas at 949, lower in urban areas at 929).
- The 0-6 years sex ratio improved in rural areas (from 906 in 2001 to 923 in 2011) but declined in urban areas.
Health and Mortality
- Crude Birth Rate (CBR) in 2014 was 21 per 1,000 people.
- Total Fertility Rate (TFR) stood at 2.3, lower among educated women.
- Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) in 2014: 40 for females, and 37 for males (female IMR declining faster).
- Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) dropped significantly, from 301 in 2001-03 to 167 in 2011-13.
- Life expectancy (2010-2014): Females – 69.6 years, Males – 66.4 years.
Literacy and Education
- Literacy Rate (2011): 72.98% overall (Male: 80.9%, Female: 64.63%).
- Adult literacy rate (15+ years): Male – 78.8%, Female – 59.3%.
- Higher education participation: Women constituted 34% of foreign students in India.
- Female enrollment was highest in Medicine (90.9 per 100 males) and lowest in Engineering (40.3 per 100 males).
Women’s Participation in the Economy
- Workforce Participation Rate (2011): Females – 25.51%, Males – 53.26%.
- Unemployment Rate (2015-16): Females (5.8%) were more unemployed than males (3.0%).
- Self-Employment: More women in rural areas (59.3%) are self-employed than in urban areas (42.8%).
- Women owned 21.49% of all establishments in 2013-14.
Women in Decision-Making
- In 2016, women constituted 12% of the Central Council of Ministers.
- 16th Lok Sabha (2014-2019): 12% of MPs were women.
- 2016 Panchayati Raj Elections: 46% of elected representatives were women.
Crime Against Women (2015 Data)
- 4% of total crimes reported were crimes against women.
- Cruelty by husband and relatives (35%) and assault to outrage modesty (25%) were the most common crimes.
- The conviction rate for crimes against women was just 2.3%.
The Never Done 2021 Census
Initial Plans
The 2021 census was announced on 28 March 2019, before the pandemic. It was planned to be conducted during 2020 and 2021 in three phases:
- House listing and Housing Census during April-September 2020
- Population enumeration during February 9-28, 2021
- Revision round during March 1-5, 2021.
In the 2021 Union Budget, the Finance Minister said the 2021 census would be the first-ever digital census in India.
Challenges in Carrying out the 2021 Census
The delay in the 2021 census has now crossed over 4 years. The pandemic outbreak has been blamed for the delay. However, it has been over 3 years since the last wave of COVID-19 hit India. Apart from mere talks of conducting the census, there has not been a real effort to move forward with the traditional and much-needed endeavor.
Looking at the events, there might be other reasons linked to the delay. Them being:
Economic
Conducting a census is an expensive affair. Countries have to assign a significant amount of money and time to complete it. For a developing country, taking out a large chunk of money every 10 years can be a problem.
The economic pressure of the census was seen in the union budgets when the allotted budget was cut. The previous 2019 budget allotted to the census has been reduced to 574.8 cr in the 2025-26 Union budget from 8754.23 cr. This substantial reduction poses a question about the feasibility of conducting the census. However, the reduction was justified by saying that the census would now be digital. This step can not be perceived as wrong in any way, but is also the only right way to go. We should include technology in our lives to save time, money, and effort, and eventually, move towards sustainability.
Administrative Issues
Continuous state elections may have diverted the administrative focus from census activities. Governance is a pillar of a country, and holding elections promptly constitutes a good part of it. A strong government means a strong geopolitical stance. Hence, the administration might have shifted its focus from the census to elections.
Electoral Strategy
According to Indian Law, the next delimitation must be based on the first census after 2026. The upcoming delimitation will possibly increase the number of seats in the north at the expense of the south in the Lok Sabha. As the ruling party has a better hold over North India, aligning the census and delimitation timeline with the 2029 elections could benefit the ruling party by enhancing its electoral prospects.
Additionally, the delay in the census postponed the release of potentially unfavourable data before the 2024 elections, helping to avoid the statistics that could highlight the inadequacies of the government in the past 2 terms.
While the electoral strategy is merely a speculation and can not be said for certain, they do pose a question as to why the census is delayed by half a decade.
COVID-19
The onset of the pandemic and the exercise of social distancing were not the only reasons for the delay of the census. There have been speculations worldwide about the death count presented by India. The reports from WHO and other international organisations have emerged, saying that the actual death toll is about 8 to 10 times higher than the count claimed by India.
This discrepancy in the death toll can highlight various issues related to healthcare infrastructure in India. Moreover, we believe that the poorer section of society might have been a great contributor to the discrepancy, as the weaker section lives in slums where social distancing is a luxury. The number of deaths in the nation can be skewed towards unprivileged sections of the society, eventually skewing the population data as well.
Having such data released could question the pandemic response measures of the national health system and the administration. This might be another reason for the delay of the census.
Impacts of the Census Delay
The cruciality and significance of a timely census highlight the negative implications of not conducting a census. However, that is not all. We see a complete socio-economic image of the nation when we analyze the data presented by a census. The effectiveness of the government policies and schemes is also represented by the census data, if and how the demographic changes.
Some of the impacts of the delay are:
- Poor Social and Welfare Schemes: The older the census data is, the more unreliable it becomes. As government policies are based on census data, they will not uplift the sections they are meant to target. Policies and schemes like Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, Mid-day Meal Scheme, Ayushman Bharat, etc., depend heavily on the census data.
- Lapse in Economic Planning: Lack of updated census data results in poor policy formulation and implementation, affecting economic growth and development. Every policy needs a budgetary allocation. Since the data used to estimate the targeted section of society is unreliable, the budget proposed and the financial planning can not be correct, leading to a larger fiscal deficit (due to more than expected expenditure).
- Challenges in Disaster Management & Climate Response: Census data helps in identifying the number of people living in vulnerable areas of the country to reach out in case of calamities. A delay in the census hinders the calamity readiness and sufficient resource allocation.
- Disruption in Local Governance: As census data is used for rotating reservations for SC/ST/OBC and women in local bodies, and redrawing ward boundaries. Without fresh data, inequity in representation at the grassroots continues, leading to a democratic deficit in fast-growing urban or rural clusters.
- Distorted Public service delivery: Infrastructure projects like government schools, hospitals, and roads may be poorly located or insufficient. Public health programs can’t target the right population clusters, affecting outcomes like immunization or maternal care. Urban development authorities can’t plan for slum redevelopment or housing based on current urban sprawl and density.
- Private sector impact: Market research, business expansion, and FMCG/retail sector planning all depend on the demographic data available. If the data gets too old, targeting the right audience becomes difficult, and all the effort in terms of planning and implementation becomes futile.
Alternate Data Sources
While the census is the main source of data, there are other sources of data as well that might and can be used in the absence of the census. Some of the other data sources are:
Vital Registrations
Every citizen is obligated to register vital events like births, deaths, marriages, and divorces. This serves as population data that includes the number of individuals, growth rates, and death rates. However, in nearly all developing countries, where many people are illiterate and live in rural areas, births and deaths often go unreported to registration authorities. Even the possibility of inadequate registration makes the use of this data questionable.
Aadhaar
Aadhaar, India’s 12-digit unique identification number, has reshaped the nation’s approach to identity verification and service delivery since its inception in 2009. The program was launched with a mission to provide every resident with a reliable, digitally verifiable identity using minimal demographic and biometric data.
Government and government websites boast about the positive impact of the Aadhaar in direct benefit transfers and service delivery. Aadhaar plays a critical role in enhancing the efficiency of social welfare schemes by offering a dependable, unified identity verification system that ensures transparency in service delivery. Through Aadhaar-linked Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT), launched in 2013, cash benefits from various welfare schemes are directly transferred into beneficiaries’ bank accounts, reducing the need for multiple documents and eliminating duplicate or fake beneficiaries.
While the benefits of Aadhaar do not lack base, there are certain shortcomings of the same which make it not very unreliable data. Among other drawbacks, there is a possibility of a person having 2 Aadhaar cards.
Voter ID Cards
Voter ID card data maintained by the Election Commission of India (ECI) as a proxy of census data, as it provides population estimates of adults or eligible voter data. It provides a geographical distribution of the adult population at a very granular level, through which we can know the urban vs rural spread. It also provides us with a gender ratio.
Voter data provides the estimates, which highlight recent trends but might not provide exact numbers. Moreover, the voter data can not be the guiding data in a democracy, as the census provides the idea of whether the voters registered in a particular region are legitimate or not.
Government Surveys
The National Sample Survey Office, now merged with the National Statistical Office (NSO) under the Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation (MoSPI), conducts a wide range of large-scale surveys across India. Some of the major surveys conducted by them are:
- Household Consumer Expenditure Survey (HCES): It measures household spending on consumption goods and services. Helps to estimate economic factors like poverty lines, inflation (through the Consumer Price Index), and consumption patterns. The latest survey was conducted in 2022-2023.
- Periodic Labour Force Survey: Introduced in 2017 to replace the earlier Employment-Unemployment survey. Captures Labour Force Participation Rates (LFPR), Worker Population Ratio (WPR), Unemployment Rate (UR), etc. This survey is conducted annually, and the most recent survey was conducted from July 2023 to June 2024.
Although these surveys offer valuable insights into recent economic trends, a significant limitation lies in their inability to fully capture ground realities. Since they are based on a sample of the population rather than the entire Indian population, concerns often arise regarding their reliability and representativeness. Moreover, the choice of sample can influence the outcomes, raising questions about potential biases or manipulation in the data collection process.
Conclusion
Census is an important activity in a country as it provides the data for policy making, business needs, etc. Even if the country has other data sources that can be employed to find the targeted sections for a policy, a census should be conducted to validate the actual number of beneficiaries present across the country.
The major reason for the delay of the census has been cited to be COVID-19, the pandemic was a global tragedy, and various countries had to delay their census. Hence, the next step is to see what those countries did. However, when we think about the issue we believe whatever those countries did, it would be in the direction of capturing the data by either conducting the census as soon as possible or the digitalisation of the census process to cope with social distancing and that is exactly what countries like US, UK, Brazil, etc. did. If anything, the pandemic made the census even more crucial due to the large death toll it had. The speculation of a larger-than-reported death count should have been a clue for us to conduct a census. Subsequently, the deaths might have skewed the demographic, which is important to keep in mind while policy-making.
Intuitively and logically as well, there is no doubt that the census is an important activity for a country, and the delay should not have been this long. Be it pandemic, administrative lag, or an electoral strategy, the census is a national responsibility as it helps in allocating the public’s money for the public’s good by allocating budget to welfare policies.
While we can suggest ways to make the process fast-paced and easy, we will refrain from it. Nonetheless, the census is a national responsibility. Knowing the importance of conducting a timely census along with the adverse effects of delaying it, the government or the administration should have initiated the process long ago, after the COVID-19 pandemic slowed down. Eventually, the delay has started to seem intentional and not just an administrative shift of focus, circumstantial, or budgetary issue.
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