New Delhi , March 30: A click on the mouse and your photograph, biometric data such as fingerprints, as well as identity, occupation and residence details will soon be available to the government. Keeping security concerns and smooth access to government services for the aam aadmi in mind, the government will launch Census 2011 on Thursday, covering 1.2 billion residents of India living in 35 states and Union territories.

While Census 2011 will go into wide-ranging details such as use of mobile phones, computers and the Internet, formal and informal banking services and even the kind of water (treated or untreated) you drink at home, the National Population Register (NPR) being prepared along with the census will have photographs and biometric details (such as fingerprints) of all “usual residents” above 15 years. A decision on taking iris scans is pending.
President Pratibha Patil will inaugurate Census 2011 on April 1 by filling up the required form — becoming the first person recorded in the census. “In less than 48 hours, the country will embark on the biggest census exercise ever witnessed,” said Union home Secretary G.K. Pillai on Tuesday. “For the first time, we will be able to have specific information about all the usual residents of the country,” Mr Pillai said. The exercise will cost around Rs 2,209 crores, while the approved cost of the scheme for creation of the NPR is Rs 3,539.24 crores.
The NPR data collection will be conducted in a phased manner. The first phase will cover regular households. In the second phase, special centres will be set up to gather data on homeless persons and others not covered under the first phase. As preparation of the NPR involves house-to-house enumeration, this will be done along with house-listing and housing operations of Census 2011. The NPR data will be recorded both in the local language and in English.
The NPR database is expected to help state governments to detect illegal immigrants. “Once the NPR is made, at any given moment we will have the person’s photograph and details before us. Any addition can come about either through birth or legal migration. Any deletion will come about through death,” Mr Pillai said. “Allotment of a unique number will not give guarantee of citizenship,” he added.
The home secretary made it clear that “caste” will not be included in Census 2011. “We have never conducted a census on castes. It will also be difficult to verify the caste of an individual. Therefore we may get a distorted version... Let me be blunt. I think in future we need to have a casteless society in India,” Mr Pillai said.
Census 2011 will be in two phases. The first — house-listing and housing census — will be between April and July, over a period of 45 days in each state/UT. Bihar and Jharkhand are yet to inform the Centre of the dates the exercise will be conducted in the two states. The second — population enumeration — will be done simultaneously all over the country from February 9 to 28, 2011. More than 24 crore households will be visited, covering 640 districts, 5,767 tehsils, 7,742 towns and over six lakh villages. Over 2.5 million people will be engaged in carrying out this mammoth exercise.
Namrata Biji Ahuja