Civil society flags various concerns over personal data, language, caste counts in Census 2027

New Delhi: Census 2027 has evoked concerns from various quarters regarding its methodology, design and purpose–the latest coming from a large body of citizens which mainly consists of former members of the All-India Services and Central Services.

Like many opposition parties, the group, called the Constitutional Conduct Group (CCG), suspects that the kind of data being sought in the current Census might be used for updating of the National Population Register (NPR), which in turn is associated with the proposed National Register of Citizens.

It clarifies that it is not opposed to the preparation of a population register or citizen register where there is a legitimate public purpose and a clear legal basis, but this should be done transparently, through an explicitly defined process, and not by using the Census as a “surrogate mechanism” to meet unstated objectives.

The CCG has pointed out that the Census questionnaire has expanded from 29 questions in 2011 to 40 in 2027. The new questions seek parents’ names, spouses’ names, permanent residential addresses, nationality as declared, place of Covid vaccination, number of bank accounts and, where available, Aadhaar, voter ID, passport, driving-licence and mobile-phone details. Much of this information appears to have little relevance for generating population statistics or informing public policy. Several of these data points are already held in government databases. Asking citizens to reproduce information already available to the State creates additional burdens without an evident statistical justification, it says.

“The problem is not simply redundancy. Collecting personal information through the Census raises a fundamental question: will information gathered for a confidential statistical exercise remain within that exercise, or will it subsequently be extracted, combined with other databases and used for purposes unrelated to the Census? The Census must not become a vehicle for the NPR,” it said.

The former civil servants and central services employees feel that an overloaded questionnaire risks unreliable data. A Census succeeds only when information collected in the field is accurate. The addition of numerous detailed and personal questions creates a serious risk of respondent fatigue and enumerator ex

In their view, questions concerning bank accounts, identification numbers, telephone numbers, vaccination locations and the names of parents or spouses require particular justification, as the collection of information should be driven by the statistical outputs it is intended to produce. If a question cannot generate meaningful aggregate statistics or support legitimate policy formulation, its inclusion needs reconsideration.

They have also questioned the way caste enumeration is proposed, saying that simply separating Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes from an open-ended “others” category risks producing thousands of caste entries that cannot readily be rationalised. The experience of the 2011-12 Socio-Economic and Caste Census and subsequent exercises demonstrates the difficulty of such an approach.

They stressed that special attention should be paid to enumeration of Denotified, Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic Communities. as these communities suffered severe historical discrimination under colonial laws and continue to experience social exclusion. Their identities cut across existing SC, ST and OBC classifications. The present questionnaire does not provide a reliable means of establishing their numbers. An additional, carefully designed questionnaire could have helped illuminate the scale of their continuing marginalisation, they said.

Similarly, they have asked for extra caution in listing religious and linguistic identities. “The Census must respect the constitutional freedom of every person to follow a religion or belief of their choice. It must also recognise that India’s religious life cannot always be captured by rigid categories.”

The civil servants advised the same caution in respect of languages, pointing out that the previous Census grouped 1,369 reported mother tongues into 121 languages, including cases where substantial languages were treated as subsets of larger linguistic categories. “Such aggregation risks erasing genuine linguistic identities. India’s languages are not merely statistical units; they are repositories of culture, literature, memory and identity. A Census should record cultural facts as they exist — not reshape them to fit administrative convenience.”

They urged the Government to consult independent demographers, statisticians, social scientists and other experts and reconsider questions that have no clear statistical purpose, stressing that, ” It should ensure that Census information remains confidential and is not repurposed for unrelated governmental databases without a transparent legal framework.”

–India News Stream

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