More than three million Indian officials are to spend a year counting every single person in the world’s most populous nation, a mammoth task delayed in part by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The once-in-a-decade population survey, originally due in 2021, will start tomorrow with a short window for citizens who wish to register themselves online, the government said yesterday.
There will be two phases of physical door-to-door surveys.
The first will list houses and housing conditions, the second inhabitants and their economic and social parameters, Census Commissioner Mritunjay Kumar Narayan told reporters.
With a population of more than 1.4 billion people, India overtook China in 2023, according to the United Nations Population Fund.
Analysts and economists do not see the size of India’s population as a cause for alarm.
The government has long hailed its predominantly young population as an opportunity to create a large pool of skilled workers while many major economies struggle with declining and ageing workforces.
The census will also collect details of castes, Narayan said.
The rigid social stratification system dates back thousands of years and pervades Indian life and politics.
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