Concerns over the Census questions

Why in the News

The Central government has notified the questions to be asked of every individual during the population enumeration phase of the 2027 Census. In a departure from past Censuses, the schedule seeks personal details that cannot be used to generate any useful statistics: the names of the parents of every individual, nationality as declared, the permanent residential address, the place of COVID-19 vaccination, the number of bank accounts held, and mobile, Aadhaar, voter identity and passport numbers. The same details are the ones required to prepare or update a population register. The contest is over whether a questionnaire built partly out of identifiers still serves the statistical purpose the Census exists for.

What is a population census?

1. The United Nations definition: A census is the total process of planning, collecting, processing, analysing, disseminating and evaluating demographic, economic and social data at the smallest geographic level, at a specified time, covering all persons in a country or in a well delimited part of it.
2. Its output is statistics, not records: The exercise generates statistics for the use of the government in particular and society in general, so the information an individual gives is used only to compile the relevant statistics.
3. Confidentiality is a founding principle: Principle 6 of the United Nations Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics requires individual data collected by statistical agencies to be strictly confidential and used exclusively for statistical purposes. India has adopted these principles.

What is new in the 2027 questionnaire?

1. Household relationships: Respondents must give the details of the parents of every individual, and of the spouses of the married persons in the household.
2. Status and residence: Nationality as declared and the permanent residential address are to be recorded.
3. A pandemic era question: The place of COVID-19 vaccination is to be recorded.
4. Financial detail: The total number of bank accounts held by each person is to be recorded.
5. Identifiers: Mobile number, Aadhaar number and voter identity card number are to be recorded if available, along with the passport number of Indian passport holders and whether the person holds a driving licence.
6. The length of the schedule: The questionnaire runs to 40 questions, many of them requiring descriptive answers.

Why have names never entered Census databases?

1. A name identifies, it does not measure: An individual’s name has no relevance to the exercise beyond identifying the person during enumeration. Names have been placeholders and have not been present in Census databases.
2. India has never computerised them: There have been no attempts in the Indian Censuses to computerise names at all.
3. Other countries record names for a declared later use: Some countries include the name and open past Census data for genealogical study. Eg. Past data from the United States Census can be accessed 72 years after the exercise, and India has no comparable rule or policy.

Which households cannot answer these questions?

1. Institutional households: Wardens of hostels, old age homes and jails must supply the names of every resident along with the names of their parents.
2. Students are counted where they are not present: Large numbers of children study away from home in hostels and as paying guests. February falls towards the end of the academic year, so they may not be at home and would not be eligible for enumeration at their normal households.
3. Ordinary households have gaps too: A respondent may not know the details of grandparents living with them.
4. Visitors and staff are also covered: Visitors and domestic servants living in a household for the entire duration of the enumeration period are to be enumerated there, and the respondent may be unable to obtain their details.

What can the identifier questions actually produce?

1. ‘If available’ is undefined: It is unclear whether availability refers to the household member concerned or to the respondent. Read as the respondent, the numbers will not reach the Census, since respondents are frequently housewives or elderly parents who do not hold these details for every member.
2. The numbers do not tabulate: These are not data items usable for any tabulation, beyond determining whether such a number exists.
3. The field cost is prohibitive: More than 30 lakh enumerators would have to sit with households to record these numbers correctly, and they may lack the time and patience to obtain the relevant records.
4. The respondent carries no duty of care: The respondent is not a Census functionary, so an individual whose identifiers are disclosed by a household respondent has no protection against their misuse.

What would the bank account question have to be to work?

1. The tabulation it supports is narrow: The total number of bank accounts held by each person yields a distribution of persons by number of accounts, and little else.
2. The same distribution exists elsewhere: For account holders, the number can be obtained by tabulating accounts against each Permanent Account Number (PAN), which is required to open a bank account.
3. A simpler question meets the policy need: If the object is only to identify persons without any bank account, asking whether the person holds one is enough.
4. The field reality: A schoolteacher appointed as an enumerator will struggle to get a correct count of accounts from upper class respondents, who may not answer even the simpler questions.

Why was the nationality question dropped after 1961?

1. Declaration does not establish status: Nationality as declared may serve no useful purpose, since a person residing illegally may declare Indian nationality.
2. India tried it and abandoned it: The question was asked in the 1951 and 1961 Censuses and was discarded from 1971 onwards.
3. A comparable decision abroad: The United States decided, after considerable debate, not to include the citizenship question in its 2020 Census.

Is the Census being used to build the National Population Register?

1. The proposal has a history: Proposals to update the National Population Register (NPR) during the 2021 Census exercise drew objections from several States.
2. States control the field staff: The Census is conducted by enumerators appointed by the State government under Section 4(2) of the Census Act, 1948, so a State may refuse the use of its staff for work that is not part of the Census. The Citizenship Act says nothing about a State government’s role in preparing the NPR.
3. The new questions fit the register, not the statistics: Details of parents, permanent address and nationality are useful for preparing or updating the NPR, which is to form the basis for preparing the National Register of Citizens. They add no statistics of their own.
4. Extraction would breach confidentiality: Collecting the information through the Census questionnaire and later extracting it for another organisation within the government may violate the principle of confidentiality.
5. The objection is to the route, not the register: Preparing a population register or a citizen register is unobjectionable and its uses are well recognised. The collection for it should run through a transparent process with a legal basis, without jeopardising the Census.

What does the length of the schedule do to data quality?

1. Respondent fatigue: The time a long descriptive schedule takes per household invites disinterest, and the respondent answers similar questions again for every individual in the household.
2. Casual replies follow: A disinterested respondent supplies answers that are recorded as data, so fatigue enters the dataset rather than showing up as non-response.
3. Enumerator workload: Recording names and addresses has significantly increased the enumerator’s workload.
4. The output degrades: Loading the Census with questions that generate no statistics may seriously affect the quality of Census data.

Challenges to the 2027 Census

1. The decadal series carries a gap: The last completed Census was in 2011, so sampling frames, welfare targeting and constituency data have run for over a decade on an ageing base. Eg. Household surveys draw their samples from Census frames, which have not been refreshed since 2011.
   The Fix: Fix a statutory calendar for enumeration and for data release, so the exercise cannot be deferred by administrative decision.
2. The general data protection regime does not cover this risk: Census records rely on the secrecy provisions of the Census Act. The general law carries wide exemptions for government processing. Eg. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 permits the Union government to exempt instrumentalities of the State from its obligations.
   The Fix: Notify an express purpose limitation for Census records that bars their transfer into any non statistical database.
3. Digital self enumeration excludes the least connected: The 2027 Census offers self enumeration through a digital application, which the households most likely to be missed are least able to use. Eg. Internet access and smartphone ownership remain lowest among the poorest rural households.
   The Fix: Keep full enumerator coverage as the default and treat self enumeration as an additional channel rather than a substitute.
4. Caste enumeration adds a classification burden: The 2027 Census will record caste, and caste names vary across regions, languages and spellings, which makes field coding unreliable. Eg. The 1931 Census, the last to enumerate caste comprehensively, recorded several thousand caste and sub caste entries.
   The Fix: Publish a pre coded State wise caste list with a residual open field, so enumerators record rather than classify.

Conclusion

The questionnaire stands notified, and enumeration will run on it unless the government revises the schedule before the field work begins. The unresolved point is not whether the state may build a population register, which nobody disputes. It is whether the Census, whose cooperation from a household rests on the assurance that answers become numbers and nothing else, is the right instrument to build one with. Every question that cannot be tabulated tests that assurance, and a household that begins to doubt it answers the rest of the schedule differently.

Back2Basics: National Population Register

1. What it is: A register of the usual residents of the country, prepared at the local, sub district, district, State and national level.
2. Legal basis: It is prepared under the Citizenship Act, 1955 and the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003.
3. Who is a usual resident: A person who has resided in a local area for six months or more, or who intends to reside there for the next six months or more, irrespective of citizenship.
4. Its status now: The register was first prepared in 2010 alongside the house listing phase of Census 2011 and was updated in 2015.

Matching Previous Year Question

“No direct PYQ traced in the provided files”