Census 2021 goes digital

In news- Recently, The Home Ministry announced that the Census 2021 exercise is going to be all digital this year.

About Census 2021

As per the Ministry, this will be the first time that the counting exercise will be held digitally.
Census 2021 will be carried out using a mobile phone app.
It will be used to collect data by school teachers who will double up as enumerators during the Census exercise.
A Census portal for management and monitoring of various related activities has been developed.
There will also be a provision for self-enumeration.
This is going to be the 16th Census since the enumeration exercise began in the 1860s.
The Union government in its Budget, announced Rs. 3,378 crore for digital Census.
Till now, the process involved visiting every household and filling up forms.
This year, workers going door-to-door will have tablets or smartphones that will let them enter information digitally.
The census will have its reference date as March 1 this year, but for snow-bound Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, it will be October 1, last year.
As per the Home Ministry, it will be conducted in 16 languages.
The Government decided to conduct Census 2021 under the Census Act, 1948 in two phases, viz., (a) House listing & Housing Census during April-September, 2020 and (b) Population Enumeration during 9th to 28th February, 2021.
However, Census related field activities have been postponed till further orders due to Covid-19 pandemic.

How is the digital Census conducted?

The Census portal which has been developed by the central government, will require the mobile phone numbers and other details of individuals for logging in.
In case of self-enumeration, the individual will fill in the required details with the help of relevant codes for each field.
After self-enumeration is done, an identification number will be sent on the registered number provided by the individual.
The same ID number can be shared with the enumerator, which will help the official to sync the data automatically.

Current process of Census

Till now, the enumerators used to visit every household with a set of questions and enter the details in a form.
The questions included were about the amenities available in a household, source of drinking water and power, occupation and the languages spoken by the family members.

Digital census across the world

Vietnam and Swaziland are first to take this leap along with India.
In other two countries, Census officials had trained graduate students for about a year to double up as enumerators.
India will be using an estimated 30 lakh enumerators for the Census.

History of Census in India

Census began from 1872 when the first census was conducted in India non-synchronously in different parts.
The responsibility of conducting the decennial Census rests with the Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India under the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India.
Census Organisation was set up on an ad-hoc basis for each Census till the 1951 Census.
Later, this office was also entrusted with the responsibility of implementation of Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969 in the country.
The Census Act was enacted in 1948 to provide for the scheme of conducting population census with duties and responsibilities of census officers.