Data collection and transfer during the census exercise has to factor in cyber threats and the need for in-built safety measures that lay the foundation for all future exercises
With a clear focus on the headcount of the population that will give a snapshot of not just the demography but also the social, economic and caste profiles of citizens, the Union budget has allocated Rs 6000 crores for the first full digital census in the country.
Proposed to be conducted in 2021, census work was postponed due to the Covid pandemic, but the rollout is now being done expansively to ensure field functionaries are well equipped with smartphones with a mobile app for better quality of data that will be captured through this gigantic exercise to be shared in a user-friendly way for policymakers.
The two phase roll out- houselisting and housing census starts in April, and subsequently, population enumeration will be conducted in the second phase. The exercise will include caste enumeration for all communities this time.
The Union Home Ministry’s maximum allocation has naturally gone to the the office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner and various schemes under the Census 2027, whose budget has gone up from Rs 1040 crore last year to Rs 6000 crore. At the same time, the allocations under census surveys and statistics have climbed from Rs 509.86 crore to Rs 5762.79 crore. The census process also allows self-enumeration this time.
The need for a substantial budget allocation also arose, keeping in mind the need to build in security features in the digital exercise, which heavily relies on web applications and transmission of data in real time. For a digital operation that requires last-mile engagement, support to the field operators who will be collecting key information on amenities, literacy, economic activity and so on from villages and wards, it is authenticity that will hold the key to welfare schemes, urban planning and fiscal transfers as the 2011 census data becomes outdated.
“The data collection and transfer during the census exercise has to factor in cyber threats and the need to have inbuilt safety measures which lay the foundation for all future exercises as well,” said a senior government official.
Interestingly, until 1991, only 45 per cent of the data could be digitised. However, during Census 2001 and 2011, the use of technology made it possible to digitise all the data collected from the field. The complexity of the exercise, especially in a digital data format, can be gauged from the fact that the last exercise had census schedules in 16 different languages, required printing of approximately 5.4 million instruction manuals and 340 million census schedules to support the nationwide operation and a workforce of 2.7 million enumerators. The 2011 census covered 6.41 lakh villages, 7933 towns, 5924 sub districts, 640 districts and 35 states and union territories.
The digital census this time is using mobile apps for the first time for data collection, which is linked to a census monitoring and management portal with multi-lingual support, code directory for data processing, online self-enumeration facility, an in-built validation check mechanism and training of more than 35 lakh field functionaries.