In the dark without data: Census delay leaves citizens in limbo

Without a recent census, a large proportion of India’s population is unable to access schemes, benefits and services due to the reliance of policymakers on outdated data.

Chennai: Santhosh (35), a single mother living with her two sons in Delhi’s Jagdamba colony, is tired of hearing the word ‘waitlist.’ She applied for a ration card in 2019, and the only response from officials in the past five years is that as her application has been waitlisted, she cannot get subsidised or free food grains under the Public Distribution System (PDS). 

Since 2020, every time Suryakali (45) visits the nearest government office in Delhi to follow up on her application for a ration card, she is told by the officials that her application cannot be processed, albeit for now, since the union territory has exhausted its quota under the National Food Security Act (NSFA). 

These two women are among crores of Indians who are left out of the NFSA ambit due to the Union government’s failure to conduct the decennial Census, which was due in 2021, on time. Census is known to generate primary, authentic data which is used as the basis for several key statistical analyses and identifying beneficiaries under various schemes and programmes.  

Since the Union government currently uses population data generated from the 2011 Census for allotting funds for schemes, Suryakali and Santhosh have been told they are not eligible to get a ration card under the NFSA, which gives legal entitlement for 67% of the population (75% in rural areas and 50% in urban areas). 

The inordinate delay in conducting the decennial Census — this is the first time that the population enumeration exercise has been delayed in about a century and there is no word on when the exercise will begin — has left several schemes in limbo. This has resulted in the delay of at least 15 vital data sets, including those relating to health, demography and economy, besides affecting the quality of surveys by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO).

It also affects how Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) funds are allocated, says Abhay, a social activist in Raichur. Technically, the Union government has to allocate annual MGNREGS funds to each state based on the number of households and labourers. This data is arrived at from the census. However, in the absence of such a number, the Union government allocates funds based on each state government’s expenditure and unspent funds from the previous financial year. 

In the wake of junking two surveys on consumption expenditure and employment due to ‘data quality’ issues, the Union government in August 2023 revamped the Standing Committee on Statistics (SCoS) to review the extant framework and to address issues raised on the subject, results and methodology, and to advise on survey methodology including sampling frame, and sampling design.

Food security

Economists Reetika Khera and Jean Dreze had in 2020 estimated that over 10 crore people have been excluded from the PDS because of the Centre’s method of calculating state-wise NFSA coverage using the 2011 Census data. Though the economists have not done an update, activists who are working in the field fear that the number of people left out of the NFSA could have increased to over 11 crore, given India’s projected population is now 140 crore.

While some states like Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Odisha and Chhattisgarh spend their resources to include more beneficiaries in the PDS by giving subsidised rations over and above the Centre’s 67% quota, states like Delhi, Jharkhand, and even wealthier ones like Karnataka have stopped issuing new ration cards.

Tamil Nadu, the only state in the country to implement universal PDS, provides free rice to over 2.2 crore families, with much of the funding coming from state resources.

Struggling to make ends meet with the meagre Rs 5,000 she earns as a domestic cook every month, Santhosh tells DH that the subsidised food grains will help her save money that can be spent on her children, who are studying in a private school under the Right to Education (RTE) Act. 

“I visit the local ration shop every two months and all I get to hear is that I am on the ‘waitlist’. I just hope my wait ends soon,” she says.

Having migrated from Pratapgarh district in Uttar Pradesh to Delhi, Suryakali and her husband make a living by doing odd jobs. They shell out Rs 3,000 as rent and Rs 500 for electricity. They are forced to buy food grains from the market. 

“We buy rice at Rs 18 to Rs 20 a kilo to feed our family of four. We cannot afford to pay this much and our problems will come down considerably if we get a ration card,” Suryakali says.  

Reetika Khera, professor of economics at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, (IITD), says the lack of a census has wide implications for the country and the wrongful exclusion of more than 10 crore people from the PDS is “just the tip of the problem.”.

“It is, however, a problem where an interim solution is possible, viz. to use census projection figures to determine the updated figures for PDS coverage,” she adds.

According to the estimates arrived at by Khera and Dreze in 2020, over 2.85 crore people were left out of the NFSA in Uttar Pradesh alone, while the number is 1.77 crore in Bihar, and 44 lakh in Jharkhand. 

State governments are facing the consequences on the ground as the lack of census data is coming in the way of planning and allocating funds for various schemes like those aimed at the development of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST), old-age pension, and housing for the poor.

The states are also forced to spend money to generate fresh data sets to identify beneficiaries for ongoing and new programmes in the absence of census data as they come under pressure to ensure that eligible people are not left out of social schemes. 

The Centre still allocates funds to states to implement programmes sponsored by it based on the 2011 population Census data forcing the states to spend over and above the Central quota.

“In a country like India, census data is very crucial as it helps understand the changes in demographic profile, sex ratio, migration, economic diversification of households and extent of urbanisation, among other things. Also, it is the census data that forms the basis or the frame for any sample survey to estimate poverty and inequality,” says Prof M Vijayabaskar of the Madras Institute of Development Studies.

Karnataka Rural Development Minister Priyank Kharge says the lack of fresh data has resulted in state governments revising their plans and budgetary allocation multiple times, as more people have become eligible to availing schemes in the last 10 years. 

“With the lack of latest census data, we are unable to formulate policies. The state government still allocates funds from the budget based on the data provided in the 2011 Census,” Kharge says.

He adds, “Since the state has already reached its maximum capacity of funds allocated, we are unable to expand the PDS scheme to more beneficiaries. We have frozen new ration cards. Several beneficiaries are excluded from schemes due to shortage of funds, which in turn, affects their lives.” Kharge points out that 18 departments of the state government depend on data from the Census.  

In Kerala, the lack of census data is affecting the allocation of funds for the welfare of SC/ST communities. “The lack of accurate data on the population is affecting their development. Also, there is a dramatic change in inter-state migration when compared to the 2011 Census. We need census data to analyse the situation and come out with schemes for them,” K Raviraman, member, Kerala Planning Board says.

Tamil Nadu Minister P T R Palanivel Thiaga Rajan, who handled the Finance portfolio for two years from May 2021, underlines that information is the basis for all policymaking decisions and derided the non-conduct of the decennial Census  as “really debilitating” in a country like India whose population is changing “rapidly and dramatically.”

“I feel conducting the Census once in a decade is an archaic model as we should be doing this exercise more frequently. But even if you do it once every ten years, you will have some bases to decide on population growth, gender ratio, and ageing. Without data, you are just shooting in the dark,” Rajan says.

"If there is no data (census figures), everything will fall in the dark and we won’t know where the growth is, what the gender equality is, and what is the percentage of old-age people. When we don’t have information, we can’t decide on the coverage of the programmes,” Rajan adds. 

Suspecting that the government is not using the population projection figure to include more people into the NFSA to “save money”, Khera said in doing so, the Narendra Modi dispensation is being “penny wise, pound foolish” as political gains from such an expansion far outweigh the financial costs. 

Development economist Santosh Mehrotra accuses the BJP government of “conserving its resources” by not extending the NFSA benefits to eligible people to “hide its incompetency in handling the economy.”

“While India used the Covid-19 pandemic as an excuse, countries like the US, UK, and China have completed it. I see the non-conduct of the census as part of this government’s systemic approach to stop several uncomfortable truths from reaching the public domain. They conducted elections, but not the census,” says Mehrotra. 

At the same time, the Union government did conduct the National Family Health Survey and NSS surveys. “The fact is they do not want the poverty figures to come out…We saw the government denying the UN’s figure on Covid deaths. Basically, they don’t want to accept anything. They can’t create jobs. They can only fix things and change indicators,” he adds.

State governments pitch in

As state governments pitched in resources, an additional 9 crore people were able to access similar entitlements (free rations) in 2020 along with the 80 crore people who had NFSA cards, according to estimates arrived at by economists Khera and Anmol Somanchi.

“Obviously, this strains the already strained finances of state governments, and it is also unfair because this is an obligation of the Union government under the NFSA,” Khera says. 

Prominent among the states that are spending their own resources to reduce exclusion were Tamil Nadu (29.5 million), West Bengal (19.2), Andhra Pradesh (15), Kerala (10), Telangana(8.8), Maharashtra (4), Chhattisgarh (2) and Odisha (1). 

For instance, of the 1.45 crore families that receive ration in Andhra Pradesh, only 89 lakh get it under the NFSA. The Andhra Pradesh government funds the remaining 56 lakh families. The AP government bears the cost for 39.4% of ration cards and 38% of beneficiaries in the state.

“If we had fresh census data, the state would not have endured such a burden,” a senior official in the AP Planning Department told DH. 

Food rights campaigner Anjali Bhardwaj feels non-conduct of census is leading to violation of the fundamental rights of citizens, like their right to food. She points out that the exclusion of people from the NFSA is non-compliant with the Supreme Court’s directive. “When the Union government informed the Supreme Court that the census is indefinitely delayed, the apex court asked it to ensure the food security of the unorganised sector and migrant workers by directing that all eight crore workers registered on the e-shram portal who are not covered under the NFSA be issued ration cards,” Bhardwaj says.

“People’s dependence on PDS is very critical and we saw how the NFSA served as a lifeline for the poor during the Covid-19 pandemic. It is a matter of concern that the Union Government is failing to fulfil its obligation under the statute by not conducting census,” she adds. 

Khera says, at the very least, the Union government should accept ration card holders identified by state governments as NFSA beneficiaries, to the extent that the numbers match the population projections. 

Economists, activists, and politicians not only question the delay in conducting the census, but also suspect whether it is “being delayed” to hide Covid-19 deaths, which were allegedly grossly under-reported. 

Injecting a political angle to the delay, Rajan said only people who run propaganda based on “fantasy and demagoguery” are interested in keeping everybody in the dark. “It may suit their demagoguery, and probably India has become much worse in volume and quality of data it generates. Even the quality of our GDP data is very sketchy.”

K Ashok Vardhan Shetty, a former IAS officer, believes that the Centre's reluctance to enumerate OBCs in the census is the reason why it will be delayed until after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Since the next delimitation of Lok Sabha and state Assembly constituencies is to be done based on the results of the first census after 2026, he says he will not be surprised if the census is delayed till 2027.

"Census is the only exercise which makes data available at district, taluk, block, town, village, ward and even household level. Sample surveys cannot do this,” Shetty says. 

Prof Vijayabaskar, who is a member of the Tamil Nadu State Planning Commission, says census also helps in getting a sense of inter- and intra-state migration and only when its extent is known, states like Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Karnataka which see a huge influx of workers from across the country, can allocate funds according to their population and needs. 

“When we lack data, there is a risk of large numbers of people being left out. How can governments provide social security support for the vulnerable if they don’t have credible data? However, state governments still try to include as many as they can, but the exclusion is real and large in numbers,” he says.

Planning programmes

States also depend on the India Human Development Survey conducted by the National Council of Applied Economic Research among other agencies for data. 

Karnataka and Kerala collect data through their local bodies to identify beneficiaries for various welfare schemes and fund them. However, Kharge says the state government still allocates funds based on the data provided in the 2011 Census.

Telangana and Andhra Pradesh pumped in huge money to collect details of their population door-to-door in 2014 and 2019. 

In 2017, Tamil Nadu came out with a State Human Development Report and District Human Development reports that made inter-district and inter-block comparisons to identify problems within the state and frame policies.

The report, which Vijayabaskar co-authored, found that 14% of households in Tamil Nadu are headed by women and the index of ageing was on the increase. 

“It is difficult to get a correct estimate of this phenomenon in the absence of an updated census. It is very important to know how much the increase in women-headed households is and what is the percentage of old-age people so that these people can be identified, and the scale of their needs mapped,” Vijayabaskar says.

Census is very important because it forms the basis for all NSSO surveys, and the sample design is dependent on the Census, Mehrotra said. “We cannot take the 2011 data and use it now. There is practically no reason (for not conducting the Census other than the fact that they are playing a trick on the country,” he added.

Though the state governments use their own data to identify beneficiaries, they don’t have central legislative backing.  “These data sets prepared by the state governments cannot be applied to centrally sponsored schemes,” says Chakradhar Budha of LibTech India, which works with tribal people. 

Arguing that India certainly has the capability to do census more frequently than once in a decade, Rajan says whatever it costs to undertake census is a minuscule fraction compared to the benefits the exercise gives to society. 

“It will be a win-win to conduct the Census more regularly by employing people temporarily,” he adds.

Abhay says the status of society changes every 10 years and the NITI Aayog has been working on a formula of adding 2% per year to the population since 2011. “However, it is unaware of the actual ground realities as they don't have the required data. If adding 2% to every year's population provides them the exact picture of India then what is the need to even have a Census in India?” he asks. 

(With inputs from Arjun Raghunath in Thiruvananthapuram, Pavan Kumar H in Hubballi, and S N V Sudhir in Hyderabad)