OBC census: SC seeks govt response

PIL in the Supreme Court on Monday made a strong pitch for utilising the elaborate ‘Census 2011’ mechanism to end the 80 long years of speculation about the exact population of other backward classes (OBC), which had been the basis for 27% reservation in jobs and educational institutions.

PIL petitioner Kishore Govind Kanhere through counsel D K Garg said that while the Mandal Commission estimated that OBCs constituted 52% of the total population, the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) in its 61st round of survey (2004-05) had pegged it at 41% in its report on employment and unemployment situation amongst various social groups in India.

Arguing before a Bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justices Deepak Verma and B S Chauhan, the counsel said if the census took steps to identify the numbers of SCs and STs, why should the OBCs be left out of the purview of exact enumeration of their numbers.

When the Bench looked up to Solicitor General Gopal Subramaniam for a response, the law officer immediately assured the court that there was no need for the Bench to issue notice to the Centre and that he would get the response of the government on this issue within three weeks.

The PIL said that the last caste-based census was held in the year 1931, wherein the OBCs were covered and complained that despite a large number of representations to the home ministry for inclusion of OBCs in Census 2011, there had been no positive response. It said the social justice and empowerment ministry had conceded that it had been fixing targets under various scheme for upliftment of OBC population without having the data about their numbers. Even this ministry had written to the census authorities for finding out the exact number of OBC population, but the request had been turned down, the petitioner said. The PIL referred to the law relating to 27% reservation for OBCs in central educational institutions and the subsequent challenge to its constitutional validity in the Supreme Court. “In order to provide reservations for backward classes among citizens in public educational institutions and for providing equal opportunity in public employment, it is necessary that census should cover OBCs as envisaged under Article 340 of the Constitution,” the petitioner said.

Sonia Gandhi enumerated for the Population Census 2011

Congress president Sonia Gandhi was enumerated for the Population Census 2011 exercise, in Delhi on Saturday 10th April morning.

The 2011 Census is the fifteenth census in the country and the seventh after independence.The first census in India was held in 1872.The 2011 census exercise was started on April 1 with President Pratibha Patil being the first person to be enumerated.Census officials visited Sonia Gandhi's residence at 10 Janpath in New Delhi and collected details.Two and a half million census officials will be employed to ensure details of every Indian citizen appear in the 2011 Census, who will also seek information for the creation of the National Population Register (NPR).The mammoth exercise will be undertaken in two phases.The exercise faces many challenges, which include coverage of a vast geographical area, widespread illiteracy and diverse cultures and languages.

The census, undertaken at the start of every decade, will also be the databank for building the National Population Register (NPR), based on biometric information and photos of all residents above 15 years of age.

CM of TN appeals to PM to enumerate transgenders in census 2011

Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi has urged prime minister Manmohan Singh to ensure that the transgender community is also enumerated in the Census 2011.

Describing the massive exercise as a milestone since the first ever National Population Registry was going to be prepared, Karunanidhi, in a letter to the prime minister on Saturday, sought that necessary provision be made in the census format to enumerate trangenders. "There are a number of persons in the country, who are called transgenders. I suggest that they may also be enumerated and necessary provision may be made in the format," he said.

The move is seen as yet another initiative of the state government to draw transgenders into the social mainstream. Tamil Nadu has taken several pioneering initiatives for the welfare of this community in recent months. Tamil Nadu was the first state to form a welfare board for transgenders in 2008, headed by the social welfare minister. The state government also issued separate ration cards to transgenders. Tamil Nadu government also added the option of third gender in the application forms of state-run schools and colleges for unhindered admission of transsexuals in educational institutions. Transgenders see the appeal by Karunanidhi as an effort to recognize their third gender status. "It is a welcome move if we are enumerated as transgenders during the census. But the enumerating staff should be adequately sensitized about our community. There is a misconception even among government officials that transgenders will dress only like a woman," said P Kajol, secretary of Aravanigal Rights and Rehabilitation Centre.

A government official admitted that awareness about transgenders and their rights increased only in the last decade. "May be transgenders were enumerated as women during the last census," he said. Karunanidhi has also appealed to the prime minister to bring pavement dwellers, who are usually left out during census, into the ambit of enumeration.

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.