The Census is a decennial administrative exercise and a Union subject under Article 246 of the Constitution of India, listed at serial number 69 of the Seventh Schedule. It is the total process of collecting, compiling, analyzing, and disseminating demographic, economic, and social data for all persons in the country. The first non-synchronous census was conducted in 1872, but the first synchronous, all-India census was held in 1881 by W.C. Plowden. This exercise was initiated by British administrators for administrative needs and became imperative after Independence for policy-making and nation-building.
The legal framework is provided by the Census Act, 1948, which empowers the Central Government to conduct the census and appoint the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India (RGI), who functions under the Ministry of Home Affairs. The process is typically conducted in two phases: Houselisting and Housing Census followed by Population Enumeration. Under Section 8(2) of the Act, citizens are legally bound to provide accurate information. A key provision is the confidentiality of individual data, which is not accessible to courts of law.
The Census data is crucial for governance, planning welfare schemes, and is directly connected to the delimitation of constituencies and the allocation of representation to Parliament and State Assemblies. The 2021 Census was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and is now scheduled as the 2027 Census. This upcoming census will be the first fully digital census, utilizing a mobile application and allowing for online self-enumeration. A significant change is the inclusion of caste enumeration for all individuals, which was last systematically done in 1931.