March 25, 2022
Abir Ranjan Biswas’s Special Mention on the delay in conducting the decennial 2021 census
I would like to read, Sir. Sir, good data is critical to good policy-making. Apart from being used to demarcate constituencies, the census data is also vital to the administration, and planning of key welfare schemes could be affected by the delay. The census also measures migration by counting those whose current residence is different from their place of birth, thus studying migration trends when compared to data from the last census. This would
enable making of policies in such a way that something like the migration crisis of 2020 will not occur again and it can be calculated that migrant workers get healthcare and social service where they are. The various large-scale surveys being planned cannot be based on a population frame based on the ten-year-old data. In the time like this, population information with its vital characteristics is invaluable to make interventions to help people. Where elections are being conducted in over six States, the reason of covid has been given by the Government for not conducting the census. Hence, the census cannot be delayed any further. I urge the Government to conduct the decennial census immediately.
