'It is for the first time in Independent India that collection of information on caste is being done.'
The last Census in India was conducted in 2011. That was 14 years ago.
The 2021 Census had to be cancelled because of the pandemic.
Finally, there is official confirmation that the next census exercise will happen in 2027.
How will the Census be conducted in a country with more than 1.4 billion people?
How many people are involved in this massive exercise?
How long will it take to finish the process?
K Narayanan Unni, a retired officer of the Indian Statistical Service, who served as Deputy Registrar General and a member of the advisory committee for Census 2011 and 2021, decodes the whole exercise.
"Because of the magnitude of the size, we have to sensitise people at every level on how to do and what to do. It is a very challenging job," Mr Unni tells Rediff's Shobha Warrier.
The concluding segment of a two-part interview:
You said boundaries cannot be altered after December 31, 2025. But the house-listing process starts only on the 1st of April 2026.
Why do you need three months to start house-listing?
I told you about the state governments appointing officers in charge of the census.
But they have to be trained for the census work as they are not familiar with the census activity. So, they need certain amount of training before the actual work starts.
The training is done first for the district collectors and their staff, and the training will be done at 3 to 4 levels. It takes quite some time.
There will also be two rounds of training for the field staff, that is the enumerators. You need to train 3 million people, and they are the vital link in the whole census process.
They are the people who will be in the field to collect information.
Another problem you encounter is since teachers are recruited as enumerators, February-March is the examination time. So, we have to carefully plan the training period.
So, after the training starts house-listing?
Yes. Many may ask, why do you need house-listing?
If you have to go and count people, you need to know where to go, and where you will find people. That is why house-listing is essential before the actual census work.
We do not have a proper list of houses when you talk of the whole of the country.
Every town and village is divided into Enumeration Blocks consisting of 100 to 120 households in urban areas and up to 150 households in rural areas. Small villages with less population are kept as one Enumeration Block.
In most places, it is the same enumerator (later does the census work), who will first go and make a list of the houses in the EB allotted to him. It means, they have to pay two visits to each place.
They have two duties. One is, going around and listing the houses. When you say houses, it is not just residential buildings but all structures including commercial buildings, factories, godowns, places of worship, etc. where sometimes some persons may be living or can live.
They also prepare a map of the area where they mark all the houses, and each house is numbered. In fact, they put a number on the houses itself for easy identification later on.
They list every building, every house within each building and every household in each house, whether there are more than one household in a house, and how many people reside in each household. This is just to assess the number of people residing in the area.
This assessment is required to find out whether the area is too big for one enumerator for the population enumeration.
They ask details of the house like, whether it is a pucca house or a kacha house, what the material used on the wall, the roof and the floor, the number of rooms, type of toilet, whether they have electricity, source of drinking water, etc.
They ask about the amenities available in each household like, whether they have a phone connection, whether they have a four-wheeler or a two-wheeler, whether they avail banking facilities, etc.
From the profile of each household, the government can find out the success of various programmes.
The list of households is the basis for preparing phase 2 of the census.
What do you do in phase 2?
After phase 1, they prepare an abridged house-list (AHL) which contains the identification of the households along with the name of the head of the household.
This abridged house list is taken by the enumerator so that he or she knows the houses to cover.
Since there is a time gap between house-listing and population enumeration, there is a possibility that some households have no one living there, while some new ones have come in. They are required to update the abridged house-list L for such changes during their second visit.
When the abridged house-list is made, if you find an enumeration block too big for one enumerator, you split the enumeration block or reorganise two three enumeration blocks so that all of them have manageable population. For example, one person cannot go to 100 or 150 households and enumerate about 500 to 750 people.
The house listing is not done simultaneously all over the country. It is done according the convenience of the states. But it has to be completed by all the states latest by September 2026.
Between September and December 2026, various offices will go through the house-listing to prepare abridged house-list, reorganise or create new enumeration areas.
When will the real enumeration process start?
After December 2026, every state will start the real enumeration process.
In the last census -- that is 2011-- February 9 to 28 was the period when enumeration was done.
Just after the 1st of March, the enumerators will go around once again to find out whether any new birth or death has taken place.
The cut-off date for enumeration field work is the 5th of March 2027.
What do you do with all the data collected?
I had worked in the census office for so long, and this is one question I had encountered most often!
Those were the days when all the data processing was done manually. So, it used to take a long time to process the data. Now, it will be faster.
How many months after the enumeration process will they release the result?
I may not be able to answer about the 2027 census as this is the first time everything is done digitally.
I expect to see most of the important tables after one and one-and-a-half years.
In the previous censuses, it used to take 3 to 4 years!
By then, wont it be time for you to start work for the next census...
Yes, it happened in the 1991 census.
Most of the data details came out after 5 years as due to delays in various processes and the manual coding and computerisation process.
What is the role of the Centre and the state in the entire census work?
The Centre is the one that standardises and decides the questionnaire. The Centre also finances the process.
But the actual field activity, that is the data collection, is managed by the state government as an agency of the Central government.
And once the data is collected, it goes to the Centre for further compilation and analysis.
What is the most challenging aspect of conducting a mammoth exercise like the census in a country like India with such a huge population?
The challenges are manifold.
Because of the magnitude of the size, we have to sensitise people at every level on how to do and what to do. It is a very challenging job.
Even some senior officers also do not understand why certain things have to do done in a certain manner.
To make people understand the complexity of some of the questions is very challenging.
Another challenge relates to migration. You have to enumerate people at where they live and not from where they are, at the time of census.
This creates a problem in the case of students who live in hostels. They have to be enumerated at the hostels and not at their homes. This aspect is very difficult for people to understand sometimes.
Another big challenge we will face this time is migrant workers.
The situation in India has changed so much in the last couple of decades that there are a lot of migrants across the country.
A migrant from Bihar or UP working in Kerala or Tamil Nadu or Karnataka has to be enumerated at the place he is working, and not in his home state.
I have a feeling that a large number of migrants were not counted even in the previous census.
And migration has increased tremendously, in much larger number, in the last few years.
Except in rural Kerala and Tamil Nadu, majority of these migrants live in the cities. It will be easier to locate them in rural areas, but it is a huge task in big cities. They may not be available, being away on work, when the enumerator visits their houses.
Then, language is going to be a challenge for the enumerators while collecting information from the migrants and even in making them understand that they have to enumerated at the place where they are during the census.
One big challenge is going to be caste enumeration as it is for the first time in Independent India that collection of information on caste is being done. It is a complex exercise and there may be many unknown issues in it.
Migration, according to me, will be the biggest challenge Census 2027 will face.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff