India to capture 1.2 billion population in new digital census

India is launching what could be its most ambitious national project next month when it will attempt to identify every member of its 1.2 billion population in a national survey.
Starting on April 1 an army of 2 million data collectors will start the National Population Register (NPR), which will build a colossal digital database of fingerprints and other personal data, officials say.
India held its first census in 1872, when it was under British rule. Since then, the exercise, which is carried out every ten years and is essentially a population headcount, has served as a primary source for a variety of statistics on the country's demography, literacy, migration, mortality, economy and culture.
But the 2011 census will be different as it will be preceded by six months of data collection from the length and breadth of the country for an identity-based record, India's registrar-general C. Chandramouli told.
According to authorities, more than two million staff will be involved in the $820 million project. Officials insist the ID program was driven by concerns over national security and over rampant corruption undermining the government's anti-poverty efforts.
The country has endured a number of financial scandals in recent years involving lawmakers, bureaucrats, corporate firms and stock markets, while corruption entrenched in government is seen as a major hurdle to the nation's rise.
Last year, Transparency International ranked India 84th on its corruption perception index for 180 nations. Indian policy makers are aware the problem is pervasive and that its hurting the most disadvantaged the hardest.
"There is a constant refrain in public discourse that much of what the government provides never reaches the intended beneficiaries," prime minister Manmohan Singh told anti-corruption officials last year.
Indians depend on a number of documents to prove their identity, such as ration cards, voter IDs, driving licenses and income tax cards.
Authorities insist that the NPR plan, which involves issuing universal ID cards to all residents by 2013, will help check embezzlement of government funds.
The project, said Chandramouli, was originally envisaged almost a decade ago. But the terror attack on the Indian financial capital of Mumbai in 2008 led authorities to expedite it, with trials on for over a year now in more than 3,000 coastal villages of the country, he added.
In India, illegal immigration from Bangladesh has been an issue of serious concern for over decades. Border guards of both neighboring nations have also set up an institutional framework to discuss illegitimate cross-border movements, according to India's external affairs ministry.
For India, the new ID scheme can also be a potential means to detect illegal aliens living in the country.
Authorities, however, accept reaching out to a billion-plus population of diverse cultures and ethnicities in varying terrains pose monumental challenges.
Data from the country's 2001 census reveal that more than 70 percent of Indians live in villages. The country's homeless number nearly two million and more than one-third of the Indian population cannot read or write, according to census figures.
Of India's 80 million tribal population, more than three million are primitive groups, official data show. Some aboriginal tribes live in isolation, away in forests or on hills.
Indian authorities say the ID project is the first of its kind in the world with no model available to them to emulate.
"Never before have we tried an exercise of that scale. In fact, nowhere in the world has a government tried to count, identify and issue identity cards to more than a billion people. This is the biggest exercise, I believe, since the humankind came into existence," federal home minister P. Chidambaram wrote on an NPR presentation ahead of the project launch.
Planners foresee a rapid rural-to-urban transition ahead in India, Asia's third-largest economy, apparently because of vast employment opportunities in cities as compared to villages in impoverished regions.
In the next two decades, the country's urban population is expected to double, prime minister Singh told urban policy-makers in December last year.
India's massive informal economy or unorganized sector currently employs 94 percent of the nation's workforce, according to the labor ministry.
Some analysts say a concrete database of residents can be used to ease burden on cities.
"The poor benefit from informal systems of economy. My fear is that when there is a formal information of people in place, the state can use it to check economic migration from rural to urban areas," said Amitabh Kundu, Professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Census department urged to be analytical

Gearing up for 2011 National Census report, a state level training on house listing and housing census and National Population Register of all district principal census officers was held at Zonal Council Hall, Kohima, Nagaland on Tuesday.

Additional chief secretary, Banuo Z. Jamir stressed on the need for proper dissemination of correct census report down to grass root level. She said census directorate should be more analytical and do random scrutiny of information before the report was finalized. Banuo stated that filing of census report should also involve the department of planning, industries department and the community for effective response. Stating that the VDBs had resolved to bring out correct census during their conference in 2009, she said that such resolution should be rightly implemented. Banuo further said that incorrect census of the previous report was a major problem faced by the state, adding that the state had not given much importance in training enumerators, and that there was lack of coordination. She urged the department of census to organize more training programmes involving all stake holders.

Principal Secretary, Home, C.J. Ponraj, said that 2011 census should be an opportunity for Nagas to redeem from their mistakes and mark as a watershed in the administration history of Nagas. He called upon the people to have a sense of ownership and honestly participate in the report. Ponraj also said that the sheer commitment of district administrators would bring significant results. Highlighting on process of census report, Ponraj said that an important factor of the 2011 census was the technologically driven programme, which he said would be a challenge. Pointing out that wrong census was a serious issue of the state, he said that it had distorted demography which affected education, planning, literacy rate, mortality rate. “We become dubious achievers in the eyes of the Government of India” he said. Ponraj further said that in the course of filing the report, effective district planning would play an important role. He stated the need to identify categories of villages and unrecognized villages in the state. He further informed that a permanent house numbering system would be maintained, for which the request was placed before the cabinet. Discussion on house numbering, appointment of enumerators and supervisors, house listing and house census etc were also held during the training.

2011 census to probe how many are disabled

If all goes well, the 2011 census will refine its questionnaire in a bid to determine how many to Indians really suffer from disability.
The 2001 census came up with a figure of 2.13 percent of the Indian population. This, experts say, is way off the mark.
And since government schemes are based on statistics, it is important to get the estimates right.
As a first step, the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP), an NGO, convened a meeting with various stakeholders to frame questions to determine the size of the disabled population while conducting the census.
C. Chandramouli, the registrar general and census commissioner of India, said he would present the questions to the technical advisory committee for approval.
'Despite a sizeable disabled population, the 1991 census did not have any statistic on it. In 2001, after year-long consultations with NGOs, at the very last moment one question on disability was included in the census,' said Javed Abidi, the NCPEDP director.
But the 2.7 million primary school teachers conducting the census were not trained to handle the question. Nor did they have enough knowledge on disability. So the census showed that only 2.13 percent of the population suffered from disability, he added.
A UN study says 10 percent of all developing countries' population suffer from some disability. A later independent study by the NCPEDP showed that six-seven percent of the Indian population was disabled.
'This meant that while the government officially recognises 20-30 million disabled people, 50-60 million are invisible. This is serious, especially because all government schemes are based on statistics. Therefore, we have decided to help the census commission frame questions to help evaluate the correct population of the disabled,' Abidi said.
The questions, Abidi said, will be such that all categories of disability like autism will be included and not just visual and hearing disabilities. Also, members of the NCPEDP would have a special interactive session with 725 master trainers on the subject.
The master trainers will in turn train 54,000 trainers, who will train the 2.7 million people who will go door-to-door conducting the survey.

NGOs to be involved in India's 2011 census

For the first time in India, non-government organisations (NGOs) will be involved in carrying out the country's gigantic 2011 census operation, officials said on Saturday. "Besides senior officials, renowned personalities from among the NGOs have been selected as national trainers in each state to provide training to other officials to conduct the enumeration of the census," senior census official Dilip Acherjee told reporters. He said: "In the first phase of census 2011, data collection for creation of the first ever computerised National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC), along with house listing and housing census would be taken up April 26 this year." The 45-day work would be completed June 9 tentatively though the dates are likely to vary from state to state. Ahead of the first phase of census, central Home Minister P. Chidambaram would hold a meeting with district magistrates and census officials across the country March 4 in New Delhi to finalise the road map on creation of NRIC. "The coastal states of India have already begun the work on NRIC," the official added. "These very critical and basic statistics of the NRIC would form the database of every Indian and these would be maintained by the Unique Identification of India (UID), a proposed system to be used as a means of uniquely identifying the residents in the country." Acherjee said that the actual population enumeration would be undertaken simultaneously across the country from Feb 9 to Feb 28, 2011 followed by a five-day revision round from March 1-5, 2011. The preliminary census result would be declared March 25, 2011. To conduct the census operation, several thousand enumerators, supervisors and census officers will be appointed across the country soon.

To conduct the census operation, several thousand enumerators, supervisors and census officers will be appointed across the country soon. District magistrates and collectors would be principal census officers (PCO) of the concerned district while sub-divisional magistrates and block development officers would be the sub-divisional census officers and charge census officers respectively. "The Indian census has a rich tradition and enjoys the reputation of being one of the best in the world. The first census in India was conducted in 1872 with a diverse schedule and separately in different regions. In 1981, a census was taken for the entire country simultaneously." Acherjee said: "The 2011 census would be the 15th census since 1872 and the seventh census after India's independence." For the first time, the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) would also help to create master trainers, who would educate the enumerators and supervisors to conducted the massive census operation.

No data since 1931, will 2011 Census be all-caste inclusive?

Should India, after a lapse of 80 years, not revive the practice of collecting data on all castes in the ensuing 2011 Census? The proposal of collecting caste-wise data beyond SCs and STs has been made in order to provide similar empirical support to quotas for OBCs in government jobs and educational institutions.

In a letter to the Prime Minister, Telugu Desam leader and former Union cabinet minister K Yerrannaidu said that opposition to OBC census often came from the very people opposing reservations. "They would first not let you count OBCs in the census and then cite absence of latest of latest census data as ground to oppose quota for OBCs," Yerrannaidu said.

Describing the present census arrangement as a "double-tongued logjam", he said "OBCs are not responsible for the decision to abolish caste wise census and therefore cannot be sufferers for the absence of such data since 1931."

Since NSSO, an organization run by the Ministry of Statistics, already conducted a sample survey of OBCs to make an estimate of unemployment among them, Yerrannaidu asserted that there could not be any reason for rejecting their demand for caste-wise census.

Brushing aside the apprehension that conducting caste-wise enumeration would trigger casteism, he said, "Non-collection of caste data since Independence has not transformed the Indian society into a casteless one nor had it reduced the practice of caste system." Yerrannaidu pointed out that even the Supreme Court had, in the context of the 2007 legislation extending OBC quota to educational institutions, conceded the need for caste wise census.

The court said, "There is no doubt and in fact it was fairly accepted by additional solicitor general that there is need for periodic identification of the backward citizens and for this purpose the need for survey of entire population on the basis of acceptable mechanism. What might have been relevant in 1931census may have some relevance but cannot be the determinative factor."