Census: Put off on a flimsy excuse

Census operations were not possible in 2021 due to pandemic. But the government should have begun the exercise at the earliest opportunity

There is no convincing explanation for the government’s decision to postpone the 2021 census. It was announced in Parliament last week that the postponement was on account of Covid-related field activities. No new date has been given and the decision will hold till further orders. This is intriguing because all other national and state-level activities and those undertaken by government and private agencies are taking place. There is no restriction on any of them. Assembly elections and other political events where there is large scale involvement of people have been held. Social and economic activities are actually encouraged. Census does not involve crowding on a big scale but only house visits for data collection. This can be done without any violation of Covid protocols. The government still does not want to undertake the exercise.

Census operations were not possible for most part of 2021 in the midst of the pandemic. But the government should have begun the exercise at the earliest opportunity. No census has been missed in the country since it started in 1872. There is a lot of data relating to family and society that need to be collected through enumeration at the ground level. The field work for this should have been started by now. It has been claimed that the data can be extrapolated from the 2011 census. This would be bad methodology, and would lead to wrong results. The national census is not all about the number of people living in the country. It produces a whole lot of data which will give the latest demographic, social and economic profile of the country. More and more details are sought in successive census operations to build a better and more comprehensive profile.

Reliable and up to date data about society are needed for planning and formulating government programmes. The private sector also needs such data. The population and its composition should not be a matter of projection or speculation. It may be futile to speculate why the government did not want such an important exercise to be undertaken now. The census might give a clearer idea of Covid casualties. There is a view that the government does not want it. But it is difficult to imagine that it would postpone an important exercise like the census for that reason. It is under pressure to hold a caste census as part of the general census, and it is likely that it does not want to do that. In any case, the government has not been keen on surveys and data collection operations. Such a policy makes the country an opaque entity, as most authoritarian countries are. Democracies do not withhold or shy away from data and information about themselves.