National Population Register: Everything you need to know about its benefits

The Union Cabinet on Tuesday approved the updation of the National Population Register (NPR), announcing an expenditure of Rs 3,941.35 crore for the NPR. The aim of the NPR is to create a comprehensive identity database of every resident of India. Addressing a press conference Union Minister Prakash Javadekar announced the decision of the Centre.

Javadekar asserted that the NPR will be a self-declaration, and no document or bio-metric will be required for it. The NPR was prepared in 2010 under the provisions of the Citizenship Act, 1955 and Citizenship Rules, 2003, which was subsequently updated in 2015 by seeding it with Aadhaar. The NPR will be updated, except in Assam, along with House listing and Housing Census from April to September 2020.

The data collected under the NPR exercise will help the government to formulate schemes for the betterment of the public through central government schemes.

The major impact of the NPR includes the employment generation potential. Lakhs of field functionaries will complete this gigantic exercise of national importance. One of the major outcomes of this exercise will be direct as well as indirect employment generation across the country including the far-flung areas. This will be in addition to the payment of honorarium to Census functionaries for additional work undertaken by them for Census and NPR.

Approximately 48,000 manpower, for both Census and NPR, will be engaged for about 2,900 days at the local levels. In other words, around 2.4 crore man-days employment would be generated. Further, the provision of technical manpower at Charge/ District/ State level will also result in capacity building as the nature of the job will be related to data collection including digital mode and coordination. This will also help in future employment prospects of these persons.

The results will be made available to the public in a user-friendly manner. All the data would be put for use of all stakeholders and users including Ministries, Departments, State Governments, research organisations etc. The data sharing will be made available to all, up to the lowest Administrative Unit i.e. Village/Ward level. Census data is a powerful tool for public policy when combined with other administrative or survey data.