The women capturing India’s Census data
The winter chill set in and Suman, a teacher in Aniwas village in Bulandshahr district of Uttar Pradesh, went out after school hours to geotag houses and institutions. Glued to her Oppo smartphone, which she bought in 2020, Suman has to capture the latitude and longitude of every house she visits using the compass on its screen. It needs to feed these details into the Digital Layout Map (DLM) mobile app.
Multi-step process
Saving coordinates is only part of the job. The next task is to ask each household a set of 35 questions, including construction materials used for floors and roofs, main grain consumed, source of drinking water, cooking fuel, among others. This data will be stored in another application called Census 2027-Houselist.
Suman and several other teachers, mostly women, were assigned by the district administration to test an important task: the country’s first digital census.
This will be India’s first census since 2011. Originally planned for 2021, the exercise has been postponed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although pandemic-related restrictions have ended by 2022, the government has not explained the ongoing delay.
According to the Constitution, the first Census after 2026 can be used as the basis for re-determining Lok Sabha constituencies. The next general election is expected to be held in 2029.
aCensus officials conduct a preliminary test run of the 2027 census in Anupshahr in Bulandshahr district of Uttar Pradesh on November 19, 2025. | Photo Credit: RV Moorthy
The final count will take place between April 1, 2026 and February 28, 2027. It was announced in the newspaper dated June 16, 2025 that the census would be held. It will be carried out in accordance with the provisions of the 1948 Census Law.
The ongoing testing phase, called “pre-testing” by the government, is divided into two phases. The first of these, Housing Listing and Housing Operation (HLO), is being conducted in selected areas of all States and Union Territories between November 10-30.
A window for self-enumeration was available from November 1 to 7. The second phase, the Population Census (PE), has not yet been planned.
On August 22, Mritunjay Kumar, Registrar General of India and Commissioner of Census (RG & CCI), in a letter to Directors of Census Operations (DCOs) of all States, described the preliminary testing as a “complete dress rehearsal” involving the entire government machinery.
Second stage pre-test
Authorities are yet to finalize the methodology for enumeration of caste for the upcoming Census exercise. In 2011, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government conducted the first caste census separate from the Census exercise, but the findings were never made public.
In 2021, the Union government filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court that the caste data counted in the 2011 Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) was full of “errors and inaccuracies”.
Census officials conduct a preliminary test run of the 2027 census at Anupshahr in Bulandshahr district of Uttar Pradesh on November 19, 2025. | Photo Credit: RV Moorthy
While the number of castes recorded in the 1931 Census conducted by the British was 4,147, SECC showed more than 46 lakh caste surnames. “Assuming that some castes can be divided into sub-castes, the total number cannot be exponentially higher to this extent,” the affidavit said, adding that such data cannot be relied upon to determine reservations in admissions, employment or elections to local authorities.
While Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are included in the Central list, the difficulty lies in the enumeration of Other Backward Classes in the Central and State lists. This is one of the reasons why pretesting is divided into two phases. However, there is no confusion regarding housing-related questions.
A preliminary test is necessary to test the effectiveness of the entire exercise. This includes evaluating proposed questions, data collection methodologies, training effectiveness, logistics, printing processes, and data quality assessment, as well as identifying potential field issues.
In 2019, when the pre-test for the 2021 Census was conducted, the questions to be asked for the HLO and PE phases were tested in one go between August 12 and September 30 of the same year. It covered more than 26 lakh people in 76 districts of 36 States and Union Territories. About 6,000 enumerators and 1,100 auditors were deployed from state governments.
RG & CCI Narayan had earlier informed the States that borders of administrative units would be frozen till December 31. Any changes in tehsil and district boundaries would have to be completed before this date.
women on the ground
A help desk has been set up at the tehsil office in Bulandshahr’s Anupshahr to help enumerators understand the pre-test exercise and their role in it. Four women from the Directorate of Census Operations in Lucknow have been deployed to the tehsil, 400 kilometers from the capital of Uttar Pradesh, to help enumerators resolve technical glitches or other problems they may face in the field.
A three-day training was also conducted at the tehsil office to familiarize the enumerators, mostly teachers and other government employees, with the digital census process.
Grades 1-5 at Aniwas School. Suman, who teaches science to primary school students, says that these days he starts his day at 7.30 in the morning and finishes at 5 in the evening. School hours are from 9am to 3.30pm. For the pre-test application, it is necessary to cover 166 households in Aniwas village with an estimated population of approximately 700 people. He first geotags the homes, then makes a second trip to ask 35 questions.
Sandhya, the ‘lekhpal’ (a clerk in the State Revenue Department) who is supervising the exercise, wanders the lanes with Suman to see if the data has been entered correctly.
“We consciously chose women to conduct the tests. During the day, women are mostly at home while men are at work. Women are comfortable with other women asking questions. So it is easier for us,” says Sandhya. Every government officer in Anupshahr tehsil office will be given ₹ 10,000 for the pre-test.
Suman says the entire exercise was monitored digitally by officials at the headquarters in Lucknow. “If you think that I can easily fill in the data while sitting at home, it is not possible. The geographical coordinates of each household stored in the DLM app are linked to the Houselist app. So, if I am not at the location, the Houselist app will not accept the data. Moreover, the coordinates are shared in real time,” says Suman.
He adds that he has to research houses by serial number. “I can’t move from one house to another without completing the task,” he says.
In the letter sent to DCOs of all States in August 2025, RG & CCI had suggested that 25-50% of enumerators in the pre-test should be women. The DCO in the state is the nodal officer of the Office of the Registrar General of India. Each DCO will coordinate with the State government on Census.
A Census official said it’s important for enumerators to be involved in the community, so it’s important for them to get to know the environment and the people. The official adds: “The teachers and other government officials assigned to this job are already known in the region. But if someone asks detailed questions, we have trained enumerators to explain the purpose of this exercise for the country.”
During the training, enumerators were familiarized with the questions and were given tips for identifying households.
“The kitchen is the basic unit of a house. If there is more than one person in a building, what defines the family is whether they share the kitchen. So there can be more than one family in a house. They will be numbered according to their use of the kitchen,” says the official.
door to door
When Suman enters one of the side roads of Aniwas village to save data on her phone, one of the doors is opened by Shalini Sharma, a master’s degree student in sociology.
When Suman says she came for census, Sharma asks for an explanation. Lekhpal Sandhya explains that this is a pre-test exercise for the Census to be held in 2027 and three villages have been selected from their district. “We will ask you about the number of people in your family, what material the house is made of, what amenities you have…” Shalini understands that this is being done to determine the future of India.
Around 24 lakh census blocks (EBs) completed for the Census scheduled for 2021 are likely to be used for the 2027 Census. Each EB usually consists of 150-180 houses or 650-800 people. In addition to her smartphone, Suman also carries a printout of the questions that she has pinned on her blackboard. “It’s easier to read the questions on paper and then transfer the answers to the phone,” he says.
As they proceed, the door is opened by another resident who identifies himself as Om Bir Singh Sisodia. When asked if he knows what the exercise is about, Sisodia says, “I think it is for voter registration.”
vijaita.singh@thehindu.co.in
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