Census 2011 - a Herculean Task

Over the night of February 28 and March 1, a small and businesslike army will spread across the land. To locate their targets, this army will look into municipal pipes, under flyovers and bridges, on footpaths, along railway lines, up dark staircases, around places of worship - everywhere the legions of the "houseless" come to rest. Other elusive targets will have been captured on the preceding day, including tourists in hotels and every human on every ship that will be in Indian territorial waters at midnight.

For 00:00 on March 1, 2011, is the moment of reckoning. The Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner has to find out exactly how many human beings there are in the territory of India at that moment, Indians as well as foreigners.

I was reading this very informative article on the Census 2011 of India and found some very interesting. I am jotting down some interesting facts/figures here:

• The headcount will be done by 2.7 million teachers as the enumerators.
• About half the enumerators are women. They will go along with their colleague or family to avoid possible harassment.
• For this work, each of the enumerator will get paid up to Rs 6,500.
• This Census will try to answer questions like how many PhDs live in houses without latrines.
• The government has allocated Rs 2,200 crore for the Census, which brings the per capita cost to Rs 18 ( The lowest in the world; in the United States, it costs almost $50).
• In Sentinel Islands in the Andamans, where the tribes are still hostile, the enumerators will throw coconuts and red cloth into the sea. Once these hit the shores, the tribesmen will come out to gather these presents. From afar, the enumerators will take video films, come back and freeze the frames, and count their numbers.
• The headcount in snow-bound villages of Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand was completed between September 11 and October 5, 2010. Births and deaths after that will go unrecorded.
• For the first time, apart from male and female, respondents can tick a third option - others.
• How accurate is the headcount? The omission rate was 1.8 % in 1981, 1.9 % in 1991 and 2.3 % in 2001. This year, it is expected to be around 2 % - the internationally accepted norm.

You can read the complete article at Business Standard.

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