Census 2020 form - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis

Census 2020 form.

Centre has proposed that the next phase of NPR will be conducted along with the first phase of Census between April to September 2020.

The Registrar General of India (RGI) has asked all States to “give highest importance, attention and time” to the Census and National Population Register (NPR) work as “the foundations of the statistics of the country” depend on them.
In a 14-page letter, dated January 29 and addressed to all the Directors of Census Operations (DCOs) in the States, Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India Vivek Joshi said, “The district level officials must be reminded of the importance of the census work and on ensuring that a clear message is sent to the charge officers to give the highest importance and attention (as well to devote sufficient time) for the House Listing and NPR work, on the results of which depend the foundations of the statistics of the country.”
The decennial census exercise will be conducted in two phases — House Listing and Housing Census from April to September 2020 and Population Enumeration from February 9 to February 28, 2021.
Centre has proposed that the next phase of NPR will be conducted along with the first phase of Census between April to September 2020.

On Sunday, the Uttar Pradesh government kick-started the process — the Census/NPR exercise will be conducted in the State from May 16 to June 30. U.P has seen violent protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the legislation’s link with the countrywide National Register of Citizens and the National Population Register (NPR).
According to Citizenship Rules 2003, NPR is the first step towards compilation of the NRC, though the government informed Parliament on February 4 that “till now, the government has not taken any decision to prepare National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC) at the national level.”
On Monday, the official Twitter handle of Census India said “division level meeting & training for #CensusIndia2021 & updation of NPR” was held in Lucknow. “All the Collectors of Lucknow division & other census officers were present in the meeting. The Director urged functionaries to complete the Census operations & NPR updation with full devotion & within given timeline,” the tweet said.
N.S. Pandey, DCO Uttar Pradesh told The Hindu that they have received the schedule of Census and NPR. “There are 34 questions in Census proforma and 14 questions in the NPR. The exercise will be conducted through a web based mobile application. NPR is only being updated, no new register is being created. Giving Aadhar details (for NPR) is voluntary. If you look at the schedule, it mentions that providing information (in NPR) is voluntary.” Mr. Pandey said.
Similar meetings were held in Goa, Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya in the past one month.
The “pretest” or the trial NPR form collected details from 30 lakh respondents last year on 21 parameters, seeking specific details on “place of birth of father and mother, last place of residence” along with other information like Aadhar (optional), voter ID card, mobile phone and driving license numbers. The new NPR form, for the first time, is also expected to collect information on “mother tongue”. In 2010 and 2015, NPR collected details on 14 parameters.
Many State governments have objected to new fields in NPR such as “the place of birth of parents” as sometimes in villages and even in cities people are not aware about their own place of birth.
West Bengal government has demanded repeal of CAA and NPR, and Kerala communicated to the RGI that NPR should be halted citing maintenance of “public order”. (Source: Livemint)


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Census 2020 form.

Census 2021 may skip caste count - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis.

Census 2021 may skip caste count .

A large number of caste names are difficult to tabulate, says official.

Census 2021 is unlikely to collect “caste wise” data as a similar exercise conducted in 2011 by another ministry threw up about 40 lakh caste names that were difficult to tabulate, a senior government official said on Friday.
The decennial exercise would involve 31 lakh trained enumerators, with data collected digitally using Android based mobile phones.
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, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The 2011 caste data, collected as part of the Socio Economic Caste Census (SECC), is yet to be released by the Centre. As per the National Commission for Backward Classes, there are 2,479 entries in the Central list of the Other Backward Classes (OBC).
“The caste data is difficult to enumerate as last time when it was collected, we got as many as 40 lakh names of castes,” said the official. “For example, a person belonging to the Yadav caste wrote Yadu, Yaduvanshi, etc. in the form; there is no standardisation. People sometimes confuse caste with gotra,” added the official.
The Census would restrict itself to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes data.

The official said that last time, the Census was recorded on paper, with the information then scanned and later fed into the database, leading to the publication of various datasets.
“The dataset on migration, culled out from the 2011 Census, was published last week.
“The digitization will ensure there is not much delay and most parameters will be available by 2024-25. In many countries, census is collected in one day,” the official said.(Source: The Hindu)


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Census 2021 may skip caste count

10k more Sanskrit speakers in India in 2011 census - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis.

10k more Sanskrit speakers in India in 2011 census.

Sanskrit may be the least-spoken language in India but it is far from being done and dusted as latest census figure of 2011 shows the ancient language has earned 10,000 new speakers in a span of 10 years, a growth of 71 per cent.

Hindi-speaking population in the country has increased by more than 10 crore between 2001-11, thus remaining India's most spoken language, followed by Bengali, which added more than 1.10 crore speakers in the 2011 census in comparison to 2001.
According to the 2011 data, released recently, 24,821 people have registered Sanskrit as their mother tongue, in comparison to 14,135 people who had said Sanskrit was their mother tongue in 2001.
The ancient language speaking population is just 0.oo198 per cent of India's total population of 121 crore.
Hindi-speaking people, as per the 2011 census, is 52.83 crore, which is 43.63 per cent of the country's total population. In 2001, India's Hindi-speaking population was 42.20 crore.
India's second most speaking language is Bengali, which is spoken by 9.72 crore citizens -- 8.03 per cent of the total population. The Bengali speaking population was 8.33 crore 10 years ago.
A total of 8.30 crore people in the country speaks Marathi, which is 6.86 per cent of the total population. Marathi-speaking population in 2001 was 7.19 crore.
Telugu, Tamil and Gujarati speaking population in the country are 8.11 crore, 6.90 crore and 5.54 crore respectively. The Telugu, Tamil and Gujarati speaking population in 2001 were 7.40 crore, 6.07 crore and 4.60 crore respectively.
The population of Urdu, Kannada and Odia speaking population are 5.07 crore, 4.37 crore and 3.75 crore respectively while the three language speaking population in 2001 were 5.15 crore crore, 3.79 crore and 3.30 crore respectively.
Malayalam, Punjabi and Assamese speaking population are 3.48 crore, 3.31 crore and 1.53 crore respectively while the population conversing in the three languages were 3.30 crore, 2.91 crore and 1.31 crore respectively in 2001. (Source: The Business Standard)
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10k more Sanskrit speakers in India in 2011 census.