Zeenews Bureau
New Delhi: India on Thursday launched a new census of its 1 billion-plus population with a 2.5 million-strong army of census-takers fanning out across the country to conduct what has been billed the world's largest administrative exercise.
The marathon task began with President Pratibha Patil becoming the first citizen to be enumerated.
Home Minister P. Chidambaram, Home Secretary G.K. Pillai and census officials visited the Rashtrapati Bhavan in the morning and collected details from the president, a symbolic inauguration of the process to count and create a data base of each citizen.
"My name is Pratibha Devi Singh Patil and my permanent address is Jalgaon, Maharashtra," the president said, sharing her details with a census enumerator.
As the first citizen of India, Patil then signed the census form and urged people in the country to "wholeheartedly take part in the exercise and cooperate with census officials as it is in the nation's interest and for the benefit of the people of this country".
Under this exercise, every person aged over 15 will be photographed and fingerprinted to create a biometric national database that will form the base of a new national population register of the nation's 1.2 billion population.
"It is for the first time in human history that an attempt is being made to identify, count, enumerate and record and eventually issue an identity card to 1.2 billion people," Home Minister P Chidambaram said.
So far, India has not had a system of issuing a national identity number or card to its citizens. The collection of biometric data using a combination of fingerprint and facial identification will be linked with another massive exercise launched last year to ensure that every Indian gets assigned a single identity number.
Over the next six months, census-takers, or "enumerators", will travel across more than 630,000 villages and over 5,000 cities in the country to visit every structure that serves as a home to put together a national database. Census takers will note details such as the availability of drinking water and electricity, and the type of construction material used for a comprehensive picture of housing stock in India.
They also plan to include millions of homeless people who sleep on railway platforms, under bridges and in parks.
The team census-takers comprises government officials, school teachers or other local officials who go home-to-home collecting data on the size of families, marital status, education and work information. For the first time, they also will count bank account holders and cell phone users.
The census 2011, which will cost the government Rs.2,209 crore, is also important as as the government also intends to create the National Population Register (NPR), a comprehensive identity database that will facilitate the creation of a biometrics-based identity system in the country, allowing identity cards for all citizens above 15.
While China, the world's most populous country, also counts its population, its census is carried out by various agencies, including Communist party units, commune leaders and factory heads, unlike the New Delhi-based registrar and census commission that carries out India's count.
The census-takers plan to finish their work by February 2011. The information will be used for government policymaking, planning and budget allocations.
This will be India's 15th census being held without interruption at the turn of every decade. Census operations in India were started in 1872 by British colonial rulers.
The national census is the only source of primary and credible data in India and is used not just to formulate government policies but also by private companies to identify markets for their products.
The entire exercise is being done under statutory provisions of the Census Act, 1948. And if anyone fails to cooperate, the person can be fined or punished.
Around 12,000 tonnes of paper will be utilised for printing 64 crore census forms and 50 lakh instruction manuals. The census forms are printed in 16 languages and the instruction manuals in 18.
-Agencies inputs
First Published: Friday, April 02, 2010, 00:24