WHEN SENIOR ASSISTANT EDITOR Pratul Sharma first suggested the idea for this cover story, there was a silence as THE WEEK’s north-and-east team brooded over it. Then came the animated discussion. Pratul argued that when the census enumerator knocks on doors on April 1, they will set in motion four changes that will shake our country to its political roots. Pratul has delivered on his promise.
In the cover story, author and former chief election commissioner of India S.Y. Quraishi looks at delimitation and the federal balance. The caste census angle is analysed by Surinder S. Jodhka, head of the Centre for the Study of Social Systems at Jawaharlal Nehru University. And the multifaceted Tara Krishnaswamy writes on the 33 per cent reservation for women in legislative bodies.
The first census in India was in 1872, and the last time a person landed on the moon was in 1972. As we struggle with hard realities on the ground, Principal Correspondent Abhinav Singh is hard-selling us the idea of a home on the moon, against the backdrop of NASA’s Artemis II mission.
“Moon has shifted from being a symbolic destination to becoming a strategic, scientific and economic asset,” said Mylswamy Annadurai, the former ISRO scientist who is known as the Moon Man of India. Artemis II will not land on the moon, but it will take the astronauts on a 10-day trip farther than any previous crewed mission.
In other articles, Senior Correspondent Nirmal Jovial reports from the Mahamagha Mahotsavam, also referred to as the “Kerala Kumbh”. In @leisure Deputy News Editor Navin J. Antony analyses what three Oscar contenders reveal about Hollywood’s fight over screens and spectacles.
Apparently, the woes of a census enumerator are not restricted to our side of the border. A colleague found a hilarious article that appeared in 2017 in Herald, a magazine formerly published by the Dawn Media Group in Pakistan.
The unsigned piece, headlined ‘Diary of a Census-taker’, begins with these lines: “Had I known this is what I would be doing with my time, I would have become a salesman instead of a primary school teacher. Believe me, getting information from these households is way harder than selling them detergent they do not want.”
The writer also takes a swipe at different communities and how they behave. “The Pakhtuns keep insisting to double-check whether we have undercounted them, the muhajirs keep asking if we can inflate them, the Punjabis insist we undercounted them last time and we don’t listen to anything the Baloch say,” says the writer.
My sympathies are with the enumerators. Let us offer them a cold drink when they come home, provide the information they need, and send them out into the unsympathetic world with our thanks.