by Maria Casadei

India is preparing its first entirely digital census after 15 years of delays. Caste will once again be included, as well as details on internal migration. However, in the poorest and most remote regions, millions of people are at risk of not being counted, with repercussions on federal funds and welfare programmes

New Delhi (AsiaNews) - India is proceeding with operations to conduct a census of its population, estimated at around 1.47 billion, within the next two years. This is one of the largest demographic surveys in the world and will therefore take place in two phases between 2026 and 2027.

The last census was in 2011, although it is supposed to take place every ten years: the 2021 census was postponed due to the pandemic and then postponed again due to the 2024 elections.

According to the latest official communication, the Registrar General of India (RGI), the body responsible for managing the country's demographic and linguistic data, has requested that all states and territories of the Union complete the appointment of officials responsible for data collection by January 2026.

The officials will be divided into enumerators and supervisors: each enumerator will manage approximately 700-800 people, while a supervisor will coordinate the work of six enumerators.

There will also be a 10% reserve of officials ready to step in in case of unforeseen circumstances. According to the 1990 Census Rules, enumerators may be teachers, employees or state or local officials, while supervisors will generally be senior officials.

Although the official appointment will take place later, future officials must first be identified and registered on the Census Management and Monitoring System (CMMS) digital platform, developed specifically by the RGI to manage and monitor all census activities.

The operation will be completely digital: officials will collect data mainly through an app installed on their smartphones, and citizens will be able to self-enumerate on the dedicated portal. To respond to the country's linguistic diversity, the app will be available in English, Hindi and 16 other regional languages.

The census will be divided into two phases. The first, called House Listing and Housing Census, dedicated to the survey and geolocation of buildings, will take place between April and September 2026, over a 30-day period agreed with state governments.

The second phase, Population Enumeration (PE), will take place in February 2027. Exceptions will be made for the Union Territory of Ladakh, some remote areas of Jammu and Kashmir, and the states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, where data collection will be brought forward to September 2026.

For the first time, the census will include the collection of data on castes, which has not been collected since 1931, during the British colonial period. More detailed information on migratory movements will also be recorded: place of birth and last residence, length of current stay and reasons for migration.

The census provides essential data for defining government social policies, allocating and distributing federal funds, mapping the electorate and guiding major policy decisions. Many observers are already discussing the implications that the census will have in India, including the risk that certain categories may be excluded from welfare programmes.

Although India is not the first to adopt a digital or hybrid census, already used by the United States, England, Ghana and Kenya, the vastness of the sample makes the undertaking even more complex and ambitious, fuelling various concerns.

The use of digital systems should speed up the process, allowing provisional results to be obtained in about ten days (and final results in six to nine months), reducing transcription errors and the underestimation of migrant and rural populations.

It will also lead to significant cost savings, avoiding the purchase of tablets, as has been the case in many African digital censuses, and the long days needed to digitise millions of paper forms.

However, digital censuses have shown some critical issues in the past. The main one concerns the risk that many people in the poorest and most marginalised groups will not be counted, especially in areas where the Internet is still not widely available, such as the north-eastern Indian states, the Himalayan regions, but also many inland rural areas.

Older people and other groups less familiar with technology may also encounter difficulties, hindering accurate data collection.

 

 

• India
• census
• castes
• digitisation