- Tuesday, March 04, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
India is projected to become the world’s most populous nation soon this year overtaking China but for at least a year if not longer, the South Asian nation will not know how many people precisely live on its soil because it has not been able to count them.
According to a report by Reuters, India’s once-in-a decade census, the latest edition of which was due in 2021, got delayed because of the Covid-19 pandemic and even after the pandemic, technical and logistical challenges have hurt it and there is little sign that the mammoth exercise will begin anytime soon.
As per the 2011 census, the last completed one, India had a population of 1.2 billion which is believed to have gone past the 1.4 billion mark by now.
Reuters cited experts as saying that the delay in updating key data such as employment, housing, literacy levels, infant mortality, etc. that are captured by census, impacts the economy’s planning and policy making.
Rachna Sharma, a fellow at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi, told the publication that census data are “indispensable” and added that surveys related to consumption expenditure and periodic labour force are estimations that are determined by information received from the census.
“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,” she told Reuters.
A senior official at India’s ministry of statistics and programme implementation said census data from 2011 was being used for projections and estimates needed to assess government spending.
A ministry spokesperson said its role was limited to providing the best possible projections and could not make any remark on the census process. The prime minister’s office did not respond to requests for comment, the Reuters report added.
Two other government officials — from the home affairs ministry and the office of the Registrar General of India — said the delay was largely because of the government’s decision to fine-tune the census process and make it foolproof with the aid of technology.
According to the home ministry official, the software that will be used to gather census data on a mobile phone app needs to be synchronised with current identity databases, including the national identity card or Aadhaar and it was taking time.
The office of the Registrar General of India is responsible for the census.
India’s main opposition Congress party and critics of prime minister Narendra Modi slammed the government over delaying the census saying it was doing so to hide data on politically sensitive issues, such as unemployment, ahead of the 2024 general elections.
