Census 2021

Census 2021

Part of: GS Prelims and GS-II- Governance, Federalism

In news:

• Maharashtra and Bihar assembly have passed resolution seeking caste-based census for the enumeration of the OBCs in Census 2021

• As of now, Registrar General & Census Commissioner of India has not accepted the request, based on following reasons:

• • The collection of data of OBCs, SEBCs, other castes etc. will adversely affect integrity of census exercise and therefore the enumeration of OBCs, SEBCs, other castes has not been taken up in 2021 Census

• • No Standardisation: In case, a question on OBCs is canvassed, it will return names of thousands of castes, sub-castes as the people use their clan/gotra, sub-caste, caste interchangeably thus making the caste enumeration exercise practically difficult

• • Unlike SC & ST, there is no such constitutional mandate to provide census numbers of OBCs.

• The 2011 caste data, collected as part of the Socio Economic Caste Census (SECC), is yet to be released by the Centre.
• The last caste-based census was conducted by the British in 1931.

Prelims Value addition about Census

• The census provides information on size, distribution and socio-economic, demographic and other characteristics of the country’s population.
•  The first synchronous census in India was held in 1881. Since then, censuses have been undertaken uninterruptedly once every ten years.
• The Census 2021 will be conducted in 18 languages out of the 22 scheduled languages (under 8th schedule) and English, while Census 2011 was in 16 of the 22 scheduled languages declared at that time.
• For the first time in the 140 year history of census in India, data is proposed to be collected through a mobile app by enumerators
• The Census data would be available by the year 2024-25 as the entire process would be conducted digitally and data crunching would be quicker.