Census Delays: Implications
STORIES, ANALYSES, EXPERT VIEWS
The decadal Census has been delayed by more than three years now despite several concerns having been raised about the consequences of not having a Census. In fact, there is an overwhelming misconception among officials on substituting the Census with alternative ways and means of counting the population.
The Census, write S. Irudaya Rajan (Chair, International Institute of Migration and Development (IIMAD), Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala) and U.S. Mishra (Visiting Professor, International Institute of Migration and Development, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala) “is not limited to offer a population count. It includes a wide range of locational, familial and individual information that serves to understand the changing population dynamic in its entirety. The first and foremost limitation of avoiding a Census lies in the reliability of all large-scale surveys such as National Family Health Survey and Periodic Labour Force Survey carried out on a Census frame that is one and a half decades old.
“Further, this decade-and-a-half has been a period of potential transformation not only in population count and its composition but also on many other features relating to education, occupation, employment, health (COVID-19) and livelihoods.”
Considering the significance of examining these features, “delaying the Census sounds most irresponsible. To think of an alternative to the Census is naive. However, there is universal echo on conducting a caste Census to serve political ends more than development planning, which undoubtedly reveals the limited understanding on the utility of a Census and its relevance for course correction in many presumed strategies for human welfare.”
The urgency
The urgency, writes Rajan and Mishra of having a population Census and not delaying it any more “has numerous grounds of reasoning, particularly a rapid demographic transition and the resultant demographic dividend. A population Census is more than necessary to reveal these changes along with familial structures, locational distribution and occupational composition. Further, in the absence of a Census frame, the surveys carried out will be less reliable and representative which has been the basis of generating a whole host of SDG indicators. And the measure of progress in the SDG claimed, based on these indicators, may well be under scrutiny given their statistical inadequacies.”
