The Parliamentary Committee on Home Affairs has said that the coming census exercise “should not merely be data-oriented; rather it should portray the perspective of culture and society.”
Members of the panel felt that since the current census has not commenced yet, an effort should be made on the part of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) through the Registrar General of India (RGI) to obtain data on such parameters as well as was being collected or reflected in the census reports in the pre-Independence era.
“The Committee was given to understand by the Ministry that the method of obtaining census data through questionnaire still continues and the number of questions in the census have actually been increased since Independence. However, the annual reports given by the provincinal registrars/ officers and even the RGI regarding the census process, etc., have not been written for few censuses,” the report tabled in the Rajya Sabha on Monday said.
The panel sought to know about the reasons for the decrease in allocation for the census budget in from ₹3768.28 crore in BE [budget estimate] 2021-22 to ₹ 3676.00 crore in BE 2022-23.
“The MHA replied that some of the tasks related to preparation towards the upcoming Census like upgradation of data centres and development of digital platform for conducting Census digitally have been carried out and hence provision of Rs. 3676 crores has been made for 2022-23 so that the remaining tasks and the first phase of Census could be conducted in this financial year,” the report stated.
Expenditure
The Ministry informed the panel that expenditure would be incurred towards various census preparatory activities such as training for field functionaries, printing census and National Population Register (NPR) material, upgrading 18 data capture centres and the National Data Centre in terms of hardware, software and civil works, publicity for census and NPR and technical assistance to States
The Ministry explained that due to the outbreak of COVID-19, census 2021 and other related field activities have been postponed until further orders. It was also informed that the data collection in the coming census would be done digitally, the report noted.
“An enumerator would collect and submit data directly through Mobile App, using her or his smartphone. Provision of paper schedule is also kept in case of connectivity issues. In addition to this, it is also planned to have online option for self-enumeration during both the phases of census i.e. house listing and Housing Census and Population Enumeration,” the report added.
