The questions to be asked to every individual during the population enumeration phase of the 2027 Census were notified by the Central government last month. In a significant departure from the past, a number of personal details, which cannot be used to generate any useful statistics, are being sought. This prompts a look at the individual questions, their possible uses and the implications of their inclusion in the Census.
It is evident from this definition that a census is viewed as an exercise to generate statistics for the use of the government in particular and the society in general. As the Census is used to generate data useful for policy and planning purposes, information provided by an individual is used only for compiling the relevant statistics. The individual’s name has no relevance in the exercise, except to identify them during enumeration. Names have merely been placeholders and have not been present in Census databases. In fact, there have been no attempts in the Indian Censuses to computerise names at all. There are countries that include the name and provide access to past Census data for genealogical studies. For example, past data from the U.S. There is no such rule or policy in India. After the pandemic subsided, people have not been taking any vaccination and there have been no suggestions from the government to the people to get vaccinated. In view of this, it is highly doubtful whether information on the place of vaccination, which could have been as much as five years ago, could be put to any meaningful use. However, several States objected to it. Hence, the State governments may have the right to refuse the use of their staff to do any work that is not part of the Census. The Citizenship Act does not mention anything about the State government’s role in the preparation of the NPR. The information on the parents of individuals, permanent address, nationality, etc is very useful for preparing/updating the NPR, which is to form the basis for preparing the National Register of Citizens. It appears that the collection of such information through the Census questionnaire, though it does not aid the generation of any additional statistics, is aimed at the preparation/updating of the NPR. However, including such information in the Census questionnaire and extracting it later to share it to another organisation within the government may violate the principle of confidentiality.
Census can be accessed 72 years after the Census exercise. COVID -19 vaccination is now an old story. While preparing for the 2021 Census there were proposals for updating the National Population Register (NPR) during the Census exercise. The Census is conducted by enumerators appointed by the State government under section 4(2) of the Census Act, 1948.
The United Nations defines a population census as, “the total process of planning, collecting, processing, analysing, disseminating and evaluating demographic, economic and social data at the smallest geographic level pertaining, at a specified time, to all persons in a country or in a well-delimited part of a country”.
