Census of India

The decennial Census of India has been conducted 16 times, as of 2021. While it has been undertaken every 10 years, beginning in 1872 under British Viceroy Lord Mayo, the first complete census was taken in 1881.[1] Post 1949, it has been conducted by the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India under the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. All the censuses since 1951 were conducted under the 1948 Census of India Act, which predates the Constitution of India.[2] The 1948 Census of India Act does not bind the Union Government to conduct the Census on a particular date or to release its data in a notified period. The last census was held in 2011, whilst the next was to be held in 2021. But it has been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic in India.[3]

Historically, there has been a long time between collection of data and dissemination of data.[4] The taking of Census was a regular process in the Mauryan administration. The village officials (Gramika) and municipal officials (Nagarika) were responsible for enumerating different classes of people in the Mauryan empire such as traders, agriculturists, smiths, potters, carpenters etc., and also cattle, mostly for taxation purposes.[5] These vocations consolidated as castes, a feature of Indian society that continues to influence the Indian politics till today.

Census of India during British Rule
This section is an excerpt from Census in British India.[edit]
The Census of India prior to independence was conducted periodically from 1865 to 1941. The censuses were primarily concerned with administration and faced numerous problems in their design and conduct ranging from the absence of house numbering in hamlets to cultural objections on various grounds to dangers posed by wild animals to census personnel. The censuses were designed more for social engineering and to further the British agenda for governance than to uncover the underlying structure of the population. The sociologist Michael Mann called the census exercise "more telling of the administrative needs of the British than of the social reality for the people of British India".[6] The differences in the nature of Indian society during the British Raj from the value system and the societies of the West were highlighted by the inclusion of "caste", "religion", "profession" and "age" in the data to be collected, as the collection and analysis of that information had a considerable impact on the structure and political overtones of Indian society.

Census of Republic of India

List of censuses conducted in India after independence:

See also

References
  1. "Where Are India's 2011 Census Figures on Religion?". blogs.wsj.com.
  2. "The delay in the decennial Census".
  3. "Government likely to postpone census to 2022". The Hindu. May 11, 2021.
  4. Goswami, P. R. (1989-09-01). "The Census of India: A discussion of issues of data collection and dissemination". Government Publications Review. 16 (5): 429–438. doi:10.1016/0277-9390(89)90072-1. ISSN 0277-9390.
  5. "The politics behind the caste census in Bihar".
  6. Mann (2015), p. 169

Works cited
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