The decadal national census, which has been carried out since the days of the British, is a crucial exercise required for policymaking in India, as it is the principal source of official socio-economic and demographic data that forms the basis for government schemes, policies, and planning.
The delay in holding the census has meant that our planners have had to take the 2011 census, and mathematical projections, as the referral data for framing their policies. Much has transpired within the past decade and a half, the most notable development being that projections based on the 2011 census suggest India has become the world’s most populous nation, and the census will confirm that fact.
The census will also be the basis for conducting the delimitation exercise for Lok Sabha seats, and facilitate the reservation of a third of all seats in national and State legislatures for women.
These and other facets make the announcement by the Union government that the long-delayed census will be carried out in two phases before March 1, 2027, highly important and welcome. After the formal issuance of a notification for the census, administrative boundaries will have to be frozen, which is expected to start from January 1, 2026. The first phase of the exercise – listing of all buildings and details about each – is expected to begin as early as March or April 2026.
The National Population Register (NPR), a biometric database of all “usual residents” in India, which is updated every five years, will be updated along with the census. This census will be different from the earlier ones in being conducted digitally, and data collected through hand-held devices, thereby trimming the time required for collating and sanitising data.
Another point of difference will be that, for the first time since Independence, the caste of individuals, too, would be listed. Having resisted caste-based enumeration so far, the NDA leadership has finally seen the virtue of making this a strategic part of its future electoral planning, particularly because the Opposition parties in India had been reaping dividends from a demand for caste-based enumeration so as to be able to identify the societal segments most in need of State assistance for empowerment at the political and economic levels.
In fact, if the Opposition had done comparatively well in the last general elections, much of it was due to their strategy of putting caste-based enumeration in the fore. Observers of the proposed 2027 decadal census fear that such a step will lead to an expansion of caste-based quotas beyond the 50 percent mandated by the Supreme Court, given the universal tendency among Indian political parties to use caste as a political instrument. When concluded, this census will be the 16th such exercise since the British rule era, and will be a continuation of a process vital to the nation’s progress.