In 2021, for the first time since the introduction of the decennial census, India missed conducting it. The stated reason was the Covid-19 pandemic. Even after the pandemic passed, however, the census was not conducted, leading to concerns over the nature and quality of the data on which administrative policies were being framed and implemented. Earlier this year, however, the long-delayed census process was finally initiated, and data collection has since commenced.
Initially, critics pointed out that the census’s digital-based approach presents problems of access and potential manipulation of data. The recent release of the census forms has, however, given rise to fresh concerns.
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The census questionnaire is far more detailed than its predecessors, with a total of 40 questions/categories, far in excess of the 29 in the previous census. A closer look reveals that many of these questions relate to micro-details of the individual: their Aadhaar number, voter ID, nationality, spousal details, and so on. This raises an immediate question: The purpose of a census is to collect aggregate data that can then be used as the baseline from which to develop policies and plans at a national level. It is unclear how specific individual details asked in the additional categories will aid in that purpose.
This raises the immediate problem of what is called “information creep”: Globally-accepted good data collection practices require that the State collect only that much information about an individual or a community that is necessary to carry out a legitimate goal. But what census-related goal is served, for instance, by asking for spousal details?
{{/usCountry}}This raises the immediate problem of what is called “information creep”: Globally-accepted good data collection practices require that the State collect only that much information about an individual or a community that is necessary to carry out a legitimate goal. But what census-related goal is served, for instance, by asking for spousal details?
{{/usCountry}}It may be argued that such information is already available in separate government databases. However, the fact that I have provided information to the government for a specific purpose does not imply a broad, open-ended permission to collect data for other purposes entirely. Nor does the fact that, under law, the Registrar-General is bound not to share census details with any other authority solve the problem: Information-sharing is different from information collection and information use, and the principle of minimal data collection applies to each stage. Furthermore, there are various loopholes in the Census Rules that raise the possibility of information-sharing in certain specific contexts.
Indeed, a closer look at the additional questions reveals that they are strikingly similar to questions asked as part of compiling the National Population Register (NPR). The NPR exercise was shelved in 2020 after large-scale protests against the link between the NPR and a proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC). This raises the concern of the census exercise turning into a citizenship-determination exercise — a concern that is amplified by the fact that the government’s High Level Committee on studying demographic changes in India’s border districts has the census commissioner as one of its members. It has previously been seen that, the broader question of legitimacy aside, exercises such as Assam’s NRC have been beset with methodological flaws and have led to wide-scale disenfranchisement and suffering, especially of vulnerable and marginalised populations. The same has been true for the Special Intensive Revision exercises that are ongoing. Adding a third possible exercise to the mix — via the census and census data under the new categories — amplifies the possibility of exclusion.
Finally, there are also issues around methodology. Responding to long-standing demands of a caste census, the questionnaire now has a column on caste, but this is presented as an open-ended column. This has raised concerns around data quality, and whether — at the end of the data collection process — this will serve the purpose that a caste census is meant to serve: giving an accurate picture of the caste composition of the nation, which can then be mapped against existing representation in various facets of society.
As noted here earlier, the census is a vital tool for policy formulation and planning in the modern administrative State. Without good quality aggregate data, governments and administrative agencies often end up working blind, and policies and plans miss their mark. However, it is equally important that, in order to fulfil this purpose, the census have certain threshold characteristics. First, the nature of the information collected must be necessary to the purpose of planning and policy formulation at the macro level, and must not go beyond that, into collecting individual or personal information. Second, clear safeguards must exist against data manipulation and the risk of use of the census for partisan purposes. And third, the census must remain entirely independent of other executive acts such as population registers or citizenship determination exercises that — in turn — can carry exclusionary consequences. In its present form, the census raises concerns around each of these three essential requirements. It remains to be seen how, if at all, these concerns will be addressed, as we move towards the second, and vital, enumeration phase in early 2027.
Gautam Bhatia, a Delhi- based advocate, is the author of Offend, Shock or Disturb: Free Speech Under the Indian Constitution. The views expressed are personal