Apr 1, 2010

Census INDIA 2011
COUNTING A BILLION!


India today launched its Census 2011, the biggest such exercise since humankind came into existence as part of which the Government will try to count, identify and issue identity cards to around 1.2 billion people.

Along with the decennial census operation, the Government is also preparing the country's first ever National Population Register (NPR), which is designed to be a comprehensive identity database of all usual residents of India.

The Census of India has emerged as the most credible source of information about demography, economic activity, literacy and education, housing and household amenities, urbanization, fertility and mortality, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, languages, religion, migration, disability and many other socio-cultural and demographic aspects of India since 1872.

Census 2011 is the 15th National Census in the country and the seventh since Independence, having been conducted uninterruptedly even ten years since 1872 through the freedom struggle, partition, floods, wars and earthquakes.

More than 2.5 million people will be deployed around the country to conduct the exercise. The Census will cost around Rs 2209 crores while the approved cost for the creation of the NPR is Rs 3539.24 crores.
The exercise will cover 35 States and Union Territories, 640 districts, 5767 tehsils, 7742 towns and more than 600,000 villages. More than 24 crore households will be visited and about 1.2 billion people enumerated.

The Census process involves visiting each and every household and gathering particulars by asking questions and filling up Census Forms. The information collected about individuals is kept absolutely confidential. In fact this information is not accessible even to courts of law. This provision is there to encourage people to give correct information in the Census without any fear. After the field work is over the forms are transported to data processing centers located at 15 cities across the country.

The Intelligent Character Recognition Software (ICR) that was pioneered by India in Census 2001 has become the benchmark for censuses all around the globe. This involves the scanning of the Census Forms at high speed and extracting the data automatically using computer software. This revolutionary technology has enabled the processing of the voluminous data in a very short time and saving a huge amount of manual labour and cost.

Stand up and be counted!

More info on CENCEUS 2011 Official website»