Source: www.bbc.co.uk
UNITED KINGDOM, April 2010: India, a country of a billion-plus people, has launched its 15th census. Although China may have the biggest head count in the world, India, say demographers, carries out the most comprehensive census – it has been doing one regularly since 1872.
The logistics are mind-boggling and the process usually works without glitches. This time, more than two million enumerators and supervisors will visit over 240 million homes, 600,000 villages, 7,000 towns and 600 districts with questionnaires to carry out household listings followed by a census of the number of people in the country. The process will stretch over 11 months, consume more than 11 million tonnes of paper, and cost at least $1bn.
First comes the elaborate recording of information of homes, including assets people own – computers and mobile phones have been added this time. It’s an invaluable database of the purchasing power and habits of Indians. After that the enumerators will fan out across the country with the census questionnaire, where smaller, but vital questions will be asked – name, age, citizenship and occupation are some of them. Policy makers and pundits will keenly await the results.