Following a six-year delay, the government of India is now ready to count its people in a two-phase census until 2027.
One of the biggest administrative activities in the world, India’s decennial census offers vital information for the design of welfare programs, government cash allocation, electoral boundary drawing, and major policy decisions.
Originally scheduled for 2021, it has been postponed multiple times already. 2011 was the last census taken.
Originally citing the Covid-19 epidemic as the primary cause, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has been under fire on what has taken so long to start the activity.
The much-awaited census will be carried out in two phases, according to India’s home ministry’s Wednesday statement, with 1 March 2027 being the reference date.
The reference date will be 1 October 2026 for the snow-bound Himalayan areas including the states of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Ladakh and Jammu & Kashmir.
It did not, however, state when the poll would start.
The government would also gather, for the first time, the caste details of every one of its citizens, a politically and socially delicate matter in India, the statement said.
Under British colonial control, the last time caste was formally tallied as part of a national census was in 1931.
Although India’s census is carried out under the Census Act, 1948, which offers a legislative framework for the activity, it does not define a set date for when the census has to be done or when the findings have to be released.
When the epidemic struck, India was poised to start the first part of the census—in which housing data is gathered—then the government decided to postpone the operation.
Even when life resumed, the administration continued to postpone the exercise multiple times without any justification in the years following.
Experts have discussed the repercussions this could have on the most populated nation in the world, including improper resource allocation and excluding people from social programs.
