“They must roll out a systematic payment mechanism for the drill,” said Mishra. Payments have also become an issue.Īrvind Mishra, a senior official at the All-India Primary Teachers Federation which counts 2.3 million members, said teachers are bound by law to help conduct elections and the census but government must increase the fees they receive. However, teachers have returned to school after the pandemic disruption and have to conduct nine state elections in 2023 and national elections in 2024 besides the census and this would again disrupt teaching. The entire exercise was estimated to cost 87.5 billion rupees ($1.05 billion) in 2019. The numbers will be tabulated and final data made public months later. They ask more than two dozen questions each time in 16 languages in the two phases that will be spread over 11 months, according to the plan made for 2021. India’s census is conducted by about 330,000 government schoolteachers who first go door-to-door listing all houses across the country and then return to them with a second list of questions. The 2011 census had put India’s population at 1.21 billion, meaning the country has added 210 million, or almost the number of people in Brazil, to its population in 12 years. The United Nations has projected India’s population could touch 1,425,775,850 on April 14, overtaking China on that day. Which is the social parameter on which our performance in nine years is worse than their 65 years?” he said, referring to the Congress party’s years in power. “I want to know on what basis they are saying this. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s national spokesperson, Gopal Krishna Agarwal, dismissed the criticism. “On important matters like employment, Covid deaths etc., we have seen how the Modi government has preferred to cloak critical data.”
“This government has often displayed its open rivalry with data,” said Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera.
The main opposition Congress party and critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi have accused the government of delaying the census to hide data on politically sensitive issues, such as unemployment, ahead of national elections due in 2024. The office of the Registrar General of India, which is responsible for the census, did not respond to a request for comment.
MOST POPULOUS CITIES IN INDIA SOFTWARE
The home ministry official said the software that will be used to gather census data on a mobile phone app has to be synchronized with existing identity databases, including the national identity card, called Aadhaar, which was taking time. Two other government officials, one from the federal home (interior) ministry and another from the office of the Registrar General of India, said the delay was largely due to the government’s decision to fine-tune the census process and make it foolproof with the help of technology. The Prime Minister’s Office did not respond to requests for comment. “In the absence of latest census data, the estimations are based on data that is one decade old and is likely to provide estimates that are far from reality,” Sharma said.Ī senior official at the Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation said census data from 2011, when the count was last conducted, was being used for projections and estimates required to assess government spending.Ī spokesman for the ministry said its role was limited to providing the best possible projections and could not comment on the census process. India’s once in a decade census, due in 2021 and delayed due to the pandemic, has now got bogged down by technical and logistical hurdles and there are no signs the mammoth exercise is likely to begin soon.Įxperts say the delay in updating data like employment, housing, literacy levels, migration patterns and infant mortality, which are captured by the census, affects social and economic planning and policy making in the huge Asian economy.Ĭalling census data “indispensable,” Rachna Sharma, a fellow at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, said studies like the consumption expenditure survey and the periodic labor force survey are estimations based on information from the census. But for at least a year, and possibly longer, the country won’t know how many people it has because it hasn’t been able to count them. NEW DELHI-In two months, India is projected to become the world’s most populous country with over 1.4 billion people.
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