DNA Explainer: First Digital Census for India - what it means and how it will be conducted

India is going digital or should we say welcome to the new Digital India! Well, the government informed on Wednesday that India's upcoming 2021 Census will be the first-ever digital Census in the country and there is a provision for self-enumeration as well. Kudos! Census plays a very important role in the planning and formulation of policies.

A mobile app for the collection of data and a Census portal for the management and monitoring of various Census-related activities have been developed.

Last year the government had decided to conduct a Digital Census by giving gadgets to all enumerators to fill up the data online. The self-enumeration will make the task easier, explained a government official. The Census is expected to be a threefold process for now.

The paper schedule, which cannot be done on the mobile and will be done by the enumerator on the ground, the mobile or digital data filling by the enumerator and thirdly the self-enumeration exercise by the individuals.

The first Census in India was conducted in 1872. The Indian Census is considered the largest repository of the country's people, covering everything from demographics like age, gender, and marital status, to housing and economic activity, and is the only source of primary data at the village, town, and ward levels.

What is Digital Census 

The country's 16th Census, scheduled to start this year, will be done digitally.

Till now, the process involved visiting every household and filling up forms, which were then sent to data processing centres for digitisation and analysis.

This year, workers going door-to-door will have tablets or smartphones that will let them enter information into a portal directly.

Digital devices speed up the process and if all data are entered digitally, analysis becomes much quicker.

While the process will save time and money, it is not necessarily efficient.

The Census self-enumeration will be a first of its kind digital exercise which will save time.

Digital Census will also help to lower the man-to-man contact risk during the COVID-19 pandemic.

How Digital Census will be done

There will be a provision for self-enumeration, meaning the completion of census survey questionnaires by the respondents themselves.

Once the Census portal is made open, individuals can log in using their mobile numbers and fill up their details.

The OTP, just like on the CoWIN app, is expected to allow the individual to see his or her information.

In the Census portal, individuals will be required to fill in the form for population enumeration.

Codes will be displayed on the screen to fill in the various options for around 28 questions.

Once self-enumeration is done, an identification number will be sent on individual mobile phones.

When the enumerator goes for the house listing exercise, the ID number can be shared, which will automatically sync all the data already filled online.