Thaindian News

New Delhi, March 30 (IANS) India will begin from April 1, the process to count its estimated 1.2 billion population and create a data base of each citizen. President Pratibha Patil will be the first citizen of India to be listed, followed by Vice President Hamid Ansari.
The headcount, which Home Minister P. Chidambaram has described as “the biggest exercise since humankind came into existence”, will be India’s 15th census since 1872. It will cost the government Rs.2,209 crore.

The exercise will be undertaken in two phases, Home Secretary G.K. Pillai said, explaining the process to create a database on demography, economic activity, literacy and education, housing and household amenities, urbanization, fertility and mortality, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, language, religion and migration, would involve visiting each and every household and gathering particulars.

The census 2011 will mark a milestone as the government also intends to create the National Population Register (NPR), a comprehensive identity database that will facilitate the creation of a biometrics-based identity system in the country, allowing identity cards for all citizens.

The NPR involves creation of digital database with identity details of all individuals along with their photograph and fingerprint.

Giving details about the two-phased process, Pillai told a news conference that the first phase, called the houselisting and housing census, will be conducted between April and July this year.

The operation will be conducted over a period of 45 days in each state and union territory. The details required for creating the NPR will be canvassed during the first phase.

The second phase, called the population enumeration, will be conducted simultaneously all over the country from Feb 9 to 28, 2011, he said.

The census, described as the largest administrative exercise in the country, has increased its scope and magnitude manifold with the added task of preparing the NPR

“Never before have we tried an exercise of this scale. In fact, nowhere in the world has a government tried to count, identify and issue identity cards to more than a billion people. This is the biggest exercise, I believe since humankind came into existence,” . Home Minister P. Chidambaram said in a statement.

Spread across 35 states and union territories, the census would cover 640 districts, 5,767 tehsils, 7,742 towns and more than 600,000 villages.

“More than 24 crore households will be visited and 1.2 billion people enumerated during this exercise. To carry out this massive exercise more than 2.5 million people will be engaged,” Pillai said.

Around 12,000 metric tonnes of paper will be utilised for printing 64 crore census forms and 50 lakh instruction manuals.

The census forms are printed in 16 languages and the instruction manuals in 18.