New Delhi: The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) Friday instructed the census officers on the ground to ask people about the castes they belong to during the second phase of the census, a gazette notification said. The open-ended question about caste, alongside Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, is one of 40 questions listed by the MHA for enumeration. The enumerators have to record the caste details based on response by the people and it will not contain any drop down or tick mark options.
The exercise, scheduled to start next month in Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, will be the first exercise recording the caste of the population since 1931. For the rest of the country, the second phase of the census, which will cover the population enumeration exercise, will begin in February next year.
Apart from the question on caste, several key questions, such as possession of a passport, driving license, and COVID-19 vaccination, will also be recorded by on-field enumerators, according to the MHA notification released by the Registrar General of India, Mrityunjay Kumar Narayan.
The notification said that enumerators will also ask the people in their jurisdiction about their digital literacy, highest level of education attained, along with their educational discipline. The status of their attendance at educational institutions will also be one of the questions asked by the enumerators.
The status of employment and means of work are also among the questions enlisted by the MHA for enumerators, along with the place of their last residence. Additionally, the reason for migration will always be recorded by the enumerators during the second phase of the census.
Before the formal commencement of the population enumeration, people will have the opportunity to self-enumerate through a door-to-door mechanism before census officials begin house operations. This period of self-enumeration will start on 17 August and will continue until 31 August this year, the MHA had said in a notification earlier this month.
In the same notification, the MHA highlighted that the first phase of the Census 2027—houselisting and housing Census was completed in 31 states and Union Territories and is scheduled to conclude across the country by 31 September. In the first phase of the census, the enumerators are recording details of all buildings, houses, and households in a specific area along with data on housing characteristics, amenities, and assets.
The exercise, the 16th overall and eighth since independence, is being carried out by more than 30 lakh enumerators on the ground. The MHA stated that the Narendra Modi-led Union government has approved an overall allocation of Rs 11,718.24 crore for the exercise, of which Rs 4,102 crore has already been released to carry out the massive exercise.
(Edited by Nivedita Patil)
Also Read: How the 1872 census struggled to map India’s caste hierarchy