DEMOGRAPHY AND CENSUS-TAKING

DEMOGRAPHY AND CENSUS-TAKING India, the second most populous country in the world, had a population of over 1 billion (1,102,900), according to its 2001 census. The publication of India's census results attracts worldwide attention due to its population's sheer size. The population growth rate in the country has hovered at around 2 percent per annum since 1961. The estimated growth rate between the 1991 and the 2001 census was almost 2 percent (1.93%), but there is a strong indication that the rate of population growth in the country is now falling compared to that of earlier decades (see Table 1).

India had a very low increase in population until 1921, as a result of famines, epidemics of plague and cholera, and the influenza epidemic of 1918–1919. The influenza epidemic is estimated to have killed almost 5 percent of the Indian population. The control of many communicable diseases since 1921 has significantly reduced mortality in India, resulting in a slow but steady increase in population. The pace of population growth accelerated after 1961, with mortality rates declining substantially without any commensurate decline in fertility. The rapid increase in its population was one of the most serious challenges India faced after independence.

The last quarter of the twentieth century also recorded a significant fall in fertility throughout India. The trend in fertility and mortality rates reveals that the pace of decline in fertility was slower than the decline in mortality from 1921 to 1971. The trend reversed thereafter, and fertility is now also on a course of rapid decline. The 2001 census results presented a downward trend in population growth rate. India is also a vast and diverse country with significant variation in demographic indicators across regions. While the south and to some extent the west of the country experienced rapid declines in fertility and resultant declines in population growth, the highly populous states in the northern part of the country recorded relatively high fertility levels and lack of significant declines in the population growth rate.

India has a population of multilingual and multiethnic communities. Caste and religion play important roles in Indian social life. There is a very clear demographic difference between upper and lower castes in India. The upper castes have very low mortality and fertility rates, while the lower castes have adverse demographic outcomes, an indirect indication of the socioeconomic vulnerability of India's lower castes.

Women occupy considerably lower positions throughout the country. As an exception to the international pattern, different decadal censuses taken throughout the last century present deficits of females in India. This is a reflection of discrimination against females in Indian society. India has about 6 to 8 percent more men than women. The sex ratio (m/f ) showed a consistent upward movement until 1971 (except in 1951) and has fluctuated thereafter. The sex ratio recorded even in the 2001 census (1.07) was highly unfavorable to females.

Population Census

The population census is the basic national population data available in India. It is important for administrative purposes and for many aspects of economic and social research and planning. Indian census taking is a massive operation, which takes a number of years to organize, though the actual enumeration takes place within a month. Hundreds of reports are brought out in each census, and massive statistical materials have been published.

The Indian census operation is one of the largest in the world. Prior to independence, in 1931 the undivided British Indian empire had the world's largest population. Attempts were made to collect population data in India from the beginning of the Mauryan empire in the third century b.c. for the purpose of taxation. Similarly extensive records were maintained on land, production, population, and famine during the Mughal period. There were several assessments of India's population by the British East India Company, aimed at assessing its manpower for purposes of defense, taxation, and employment.

With the introduction of the first census in 1801 in Great Britain, it was expected that a census would be taken in India as well. It took, however, another eighty years to plan and execute a synchronous census in India. The first census along modern lines was taken in the North-West provinces in 1853. Although not systematic, population counts were taken since 1820 in several regions of India.

The year 1872 marked the beginning of modern census taking in undivided India. However, a synchronous census began only from 1881 and continued at ten-year intervals. The 1872 census was not synchronous or systematic. It was held at different dates in different parts of the country. It also did not cover all the provinces of India. The original idea was to count the population throughout the country on a particular day, but the census operation went on for several months. The reference date of the census was finally recorded as 21 February 1872. The problems of coverage and cartography that the 1872 group of censuses had presented were ably followed up by W. W. Hunter's Statistical Survey and the Survey of India, which helped plan for the 1881 census.

The Indian census was undertaken on the same day on a de facto basis until 1931. Each person was counted at the place where the person was actually found on the reference date of the census. However, it became increasingly difficult to conduct the entire enumeration on a single day. Hence, census taking moved from de facto to de jure, that is, counting a person according to his or her usual residence. Of these two types of enumeration, the de jure method is more difficult to accomplish without the risk of omission or double counting.

Census taking had been a strenuous effort in India. Certain areas had to be excluded from census taking, and special efforts had to be made in remote or mountainous regions. The 1881 census, for instance, was not taken in Kashmir. Further, in the princely states, except Hyderabad, Baroda, and Mysore, full information was not obtained. The censuses prior to independence thus missed some regions due to specific problems encountered in those areas.

The census of British India provided valuable insights into various aspects of Indian life. The results of each census have been published in detail, except in 1941, when detailed census reports could not be published due to constraints imposed by World War II. Hundreds of volumes have been written on various aspects of the census.

The British census commissioner of 1941, W. W. M. Yeatts, remained in India after independence in 1947, and he was appointed the first census commissioner of independent India. After his death in 1948, R. A. Gopalaswami was appointed to take his place.

When the preparation for the 1951 census was underway, it was clear that a complete count was impossible with the conditions prevailing in Jammu and Kashmir. The government therefore decided not to attempt a census in that state. However, using available past census figures, estimates were arrived at for Jammu and Kashmir for the 1951 census. Similarly, census taking could not be conducted in Assam in the 1981 census, nor in Jammu and Kashmir in 1991.

In 1951, when the first census of independent India was taken, the census commissioner created a compromise between an omnibus type of report and the almost bare presentation of tables made in 1941. His general report was fairly lengthy, but it concentrated on one central theme: the food problem in the context of rapid population growth. The 1961 census commissioner also followed this practice and chose levels of regional development as the main theme of his report.

The 1971 census used electronic computer facilities for the first time. This use of technology raised the hope that the publication of census results would become much faster. But modern computer technology without a matching printing technology created substantial delays in the publication of census tables. Census reports or tables printed five years after the census enumeration are usually shelved by readers in anticipation of the next census.

Soon after independence, India's census organization became permanent under the Ministry of Home Affairs. From 1961, the census of India began to publish a monograph series on various aspects of the field. The Census of India Act was passed in 1948, providing adequate support to the census organization, making it obligatory for every person occupying a house or enclosure to allow access to census officers and to allow them to paint on or to affix such letters, marks, or numbers as may be necessary for census purposes. The law further makes it mandatory for citizens to answer census questions truthfully. The law also ensures the privacy of the information collected during the census operation.

The aim of the census is to count each individual, although operationally the entity of enumeration is the household. In the 1951 census, a uniform definition was adopted for households throughout India. A "household" was defined as a "group of people who lived together and took their food from a common kitchen" (Census of India, 1951).

The village and town are considered the smallest territorial units in rural and urban areas, respectively. Maps of these areas would be useful, but have been rare in the history of the Indian census. Only in the North-West Frontier provinces were maps used to help in the enumeration. Since 1961, however, the use of maps has become more common.

Once the territorial location is demarcated clearly, the next important task in the preparatory stage is to locate every household within the smallest administrative units. Since 1941, during the house-listing operation, information was also gathered concerning the head of the family, type of house, and, recently, details of amenities. Such data provide valuable insights into many aspects of Indian domestic life, and increase knowledge of living standards throughout the country. Trained enumerators visit every household in every corner of the country to gather information. The enumeration now takes about twenty days to complete.

The census organization carries out data processing, tabulation, and analyses of their data; this data processing has been computerized since 1971. Provisional census figures are published within months of the enumeration. However, there is an enormous delay in releasing other detailed tables, which may take six to seven years.

Problems of the Census Count

The aim of the census organization is to gather accurate information from every individual in the country. However, in India, social and cultural traditions often prevent people from revealing accurate information. Nearly 72 percent of the population in India live in rural areas, according to the 2001 census. Many villages, especially tribal villages, have very limited accessibility. It is widely accepted that most censuses in the world under-count people to a certain extent, particularly young children. In India, sociocultural habits are said to result in a significantly higher undercount of females.

In the past, the primary motive for census taking was for assessing taxes. This general perception has remained a serious barrier to the gathering of accurate information from most rural homes. It is, however, expected that the data collected over a number of censuses are likely to become more accurate and dependable. Even after several years of census taking in India, however, it is the experience of field workers in villages that the most common misgiving about any census or sample survey is fear of the imposition of taxes. As early as in the 1872, the census reports observed that many misapprehensions prevailed on the subject of an approaching census. A number of wild rumors were usually spread about the objectives of census taking, with the levy of taxes being the major concern. In Madras it was feared that houses were numbered to levy a house tax.

In many parts of India, land is largely held by dominant castes, who have economically exploited low-ranking landless laborers and poor artisans. Early censuses did not provide an accurate count of people of the lower castes. The censuses taken after independence removed questions on caste and limited them only to scheduled castes and scheduled tribes as a constitutional requirement. The major contribution of the census of independent India was in the field of internal migration and urbanization. For the first time in the history of the census, the 1951 census gave the rural-urban makeup for all tables.

The poor status of women in India gives them a higher likelihood of being uncounted in censuses. In some parts of the British India, people thought that the British government conducted censuses to find wives for British soldiers. Women were often concealed from census takers to avoid the possibility of exploitation.

Indian censuses since the beginning of the twentieth century reveal a continuous increase in the masculinity of the population, at least until 1971 (see Figure 1). After a detailed examination of the various factors accounting for the falling sex ratio in the country, Pravin Visaria (1961) concluded that it was the result of higher mortality among females than males.

The sex ratio (m/f ) of the population has been fluctuating since the 1971 census. An assessment of the underenumeration in the census by Mari P. N. Bhat in 1998 observed that there has been an excessive under-count of females, approximately 1.8 percent in the 1991 census as compared to the 1981 census, leading to an increase in the sex ratio. According to Tim Dyson (2001), the brief reversals of the trend toward increasing masculinity in the censuses of 1951, 1981, and 2001 happened mainly because females in particular were better counted in these censuses than in the immediately preceding enumerations. This gives credence to the notion that, even after independence, a fairly large proportion of females in the country remain unreported.

Given the sociocultural conditions prevailing in India, and the vastness of its census operation, conducted under extremely difficult conditions, census underestimates are not surprising. Skepticism still persists regarding the purpose of census taking, and widespread illiteracy, particularly among the lower classes, especially women, contributes to the possibility of underenumeration. Post-enumeration surveys, however, indicate levels of under-enumeration varying between 1.5 and 2.0 percent. It is possible that even postenumeration surveys underestimate the magnitude of the census undercount. Hence the true population of India may be larger than the census data indicate.

K. S. James

See alsoDemographic Trends since 1757 ; Population, Gender Ratio of

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bhat, Mari P. N. "Demographic Estimates for Post Independence India: A New Integration." Demography India 27, no. 1 (1998): 23–55.

Bose, Ashish. "The Census of India: A Historical Perspective." Demography India 2, no. 1 (1973): 18–32.

Census of India. India, Vol.1, Part II A, Demographic Tables. New Delhi: Office of the Registrar General of India, Ministry of Home Affairs, 1951.

Davis, Kingsley, The Population of India and Pakistan. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1951.

Dyson, Tim. "The Preliminary Demography of the 2001 Census of India." Population and Development Review 27, no. 2 (2001): 341–356.

Mitra, Asok. "Census 1961: New Pathways." Economic and Political Weekly 29, nos. 51–52 (1994): 3207–3221.

Natarajan, D. Indian Census through a Hundred Years. Census Centenary Monograph no. 2, part 1. New Delhi: Office of the Registrar General of India, Ministry of Home Affairs, 1971.

Srivastava, S. C. Indian Census in Perspective. Census Centenary Monograph no. 1. New Delhi: Office of the Registrar General of India, Ministry of Home Affairs, 1971.

Visaria, Pravin. The Sex Ratio of the Population of India. Monograph no. 10. New Delhi: Office of the Registrar General of India, Ministry of Home Affairs, 1961.