Ashraf Engineer
July 5, 2025
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Hello and welcome to All Indians Matter. I am Ashraf Engineer.
Finally, after a six-year delay, India is embarking on a two-phase census from next year that will conclude in 2027. Supposed to happen once every decade, it is among the world’s largest administrative exercises. The census provides critical data for a range of activities, from economic planning and welfare schemes to how many electoral constituencies there should be and their shapes. Census data is the foundation on which key policy decisions are made.
It’s been a much-delayed start, for which the government has faced severe criticism. It was due in 2021, but the government cited the COVID-19 pandemic to delay it – an excuse that didn’t find many takers. That’s because it kept delaying the exercise long after life returned to normal.
Now, the reference date for the census will be March 1, 2027, except for the snow-bound Himalayan regions of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir, for which the reference date will be October 1, 2026.
For the first time ever, after the Congress-led Opposition demanded it, the government will also collect caste details. This was last done in 1931 when the British were still ruling India.
Why is the census so important for governmental decision making and what does the delay mean for you?
SIGNATURE TUNE
The Census Act of 1948 provides the legal framework for the exercise, but does not specify a fixed schedule for it. However, many experts have warned of the consequences of a delay or not conducting it at all. As I said earlier, the census is not merely a count of Indians, it provides the data you need to make governmental decisions.
The census offers a holistic picture of India because it records age, gender, family status, economic position, unemployment, language, education, disability, migration and many other data points. It tells us not only how the country has changed since the last census but what to expect in the future.
What happens when the census is not done? Millions could find themselves excluded from welfare schemes and resources could be allocated incorrectly.
One example of how the data informs governmental decisions is interest rates. The Reserve Bank of India decides whether to raise or lower rates based on retail inflation. This rate, in turn, is based on the Consumer Price Index – a basket of products and services. This index is calculated by allocating different weightages to different goods and services. Food, for example, has a 46% weightage. Another way of expressing this is that food accounts for 46% of all the money spent by a common Indian.
How is this weightage allocated? It is based on yet another study — the consumption survey. And how does the government know if this survey is modelled correctly? Enter the census. The census establishes the ‘reality’ that all these other studies and analyses capture. It’s the base for all studies and policymaking. So, who lives where, how much they earn, the size of their family, etc, are all in the census.
Incidentally, the census data is used by the private sector as well to predict where demand for their products will rise or fall.
Another area that the census informs is migration. While population projections are based on birth and death rates, internal migration is emerging as a critical variable. And it’s not just inter-state migration either; most of India’s migration is intra-district at 62% and inter-district at 26%. Migration has wide policy implications — it impacts rural and urban allocations for critical public services such as education and healthcare.
However, these are statistics based on the 2011 census. Migration patterns may have transformed since then and we will know that only once the new census is done.
Let’s go back in time now to understand how the census was instituted and how it evolved. While the first one was attempted in 1872, the first ‘synchronous’ – that is, conducted on the same day – census happened in 1881. More than 250 million people answered the questions put to them by hundreds of enumerators. For 130 years after that, India never missed its decadal census – even in times of national emergencies like war.
The exercise involves hundreds of thousands of enumerators and the data they collect is used by policymakers, economists, demographers, anyone who needs it to take key decisions.
Each census added layers of demographic, economic and cultural data. For instance, the 1891 census recorded Jats and Rajputs as castes/tribes although the ‘tribe’ category was added only in the 1901 census. The 1931 census, which I pointed out earlier was the last time caste was a parameter, recorded 4,147 castes and 225 languages. According to the next census in 1941, the population recorded was 318 million, a 52% rise from the 1881 census.
The first census conducted in independent India was in 1951 and recorded the population as 361 million with a literacy rate of just 16.67%. The 1961 census saw the recognition of 1,652 mother tongues and the population recorded was 438 million.
The 1971 and 1981 censuses recorded the population as 547 million and 685 million respectively. Assam was excluded in 1981 because of the separatist movement there and data was extrapolated from earlier figures. In 1991, Jammu and Kashmir was excluded because of the violence there and data was extrapolated there too. This census recognised 1,576 mother tongues and 22 languages with over 10 lakh speakers each. The population in 1991 had grown to 838 million. While population growth rates declined since then, the overall population number crossed the 1-billion mark in the 2001 census.
In 2011, for the first time, biometric information was collected and a ‘no religion’ category included for the first time. It enumerated the transgender population as a separate category – another first. This census deployed 27 lakh enumerators and recorded the population as 1.2 billion. It cost Rs 2,200 crore or $260 million. That was roughly half a dollar per individual at the forex rate in those days and far less than the global average of $4.6. In other words, it is perhaps the most cost-effective census in the world. The literacy rate, that is the population above age 7 that can read and write at least one language, was 74.04%.
The census exercise is overseen by the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, which come under the Ministry of Home Affairs. It has two major phases.
The first is the House-Listing and Housing Census. This is not about counting people but homes and assessing living conditions. Enumerators visit each building and home to note housing type, water sources, toilet access, cooking fuel, electricity, assets like TV or vehicles, etc. Every household is given a unique number and the data helps build the National Population Register.
The population enumeration happens in the second phase. Each person residing in India is counted by enumerators going door to door and filling out detailed questionnaires that include name, age, gender, marital status, religion, mother tongue, educational, employment status, occupation, disability status, migration history and scheduled caste or tribe status.
As I said earlier, India in 2025 is operating on 14-year-old data. To illustrate the gap, let me offer a statistic: the 2011 census recorded 1.2 billion people but the Unique Identification Authority of India recorded 1.38 billion individual Aadhaar numbers as of 2023. Even if you think this an unreliable marker because even non-resident Indians have Aadhaar, there is still a difference of at least 170 million between 2011 and now. That’s roughly 2% of the world’s population.
So, one consequence of the delay in conducting the census is the negative impact on the Public Distribution System, or PDS, through which the government supplies food and other essentials to the poor. Millions depend on it. Since the government still depends on 2011 population figures to determine who is eligible, more than 100 million Indians are estimated to have been excluded from the PDS.
Apart from the impact on welfare, the census also provides the data set from which other crucial studies, such as the National Sample Survey, or NSS, are conducted. The NSS is a series of surveys that collects information on all aspects of our economic life. Another example is the National Family Health Survey, a household study of health and social indicators.
So, no matter how competent an agency is, no survey conducted by it can capture the reality of India if it is modelled on outdated census data.
The six-year delay and the politicisation of issues such as caste and electoral boundaries are problem areas. Each year of delay makes it tougher to understand India and therefore govern it. The census, it follows, is a critical reset – not just for policymakers but also for us as citizens.
Thank you all for listening. Please visit allindiansmatter.in for more columns and audio podcasts. You can follow me on Twitter at @AshrafEngineer and @AllIndiansCount. Search for the All Indians Matter page on Facebook. On Instagram, the handle is @AllIndiansMatter. Email me at editor@allindiansmatter.in. Catch you again soon.
