1292 20 MARCH 2020 • VOL 367 ISSUE 6484 SCIENCEPHOTO: ANSHUMAN POYREKAR/HINDUSTAN TIMES/GETTY IMAGESN
ext month, some 3 million enumera-
tors will fan out across India in a
once-a-decade ritual, gathering data
for one of Asia’s oldest and most re-
spected censuses. But this year could
be different. Social scientists in India
fear political unrest will disrupt the count,
compromising critical demographic data
for years to come. In particular, they worry
that opposition to controversial new citizen-
ship policies could cause many of India’s
1.3 billion people to refuse to participate in
the census. And recent attacks on fieldwork-
ers conducting other government surveys
have raised concerns about the safety of In-
dia’s enumerators, who will begin work on
1 April. (The coronavirus outbreak might also
disrupt the count.)
“This is a situation we’ve never faced,” says
Pronab Sen, India’s former chief statistician.
“We’ve always had cooperation in the census’
long history.”
India has conducted the tally since- “There are very few countries in Asia
with such a census,” says Perianayagam
Arokiasamy, a specialist at the International
Institute for Population Sciences. The data
play a key role in political and economic deci-
sions. They are used to draw legislative dis-
tricts, apportion government spending, and
inform investment decisions by businesses.
Researchers use the data for studies and to
design their own surveys. “There is really no
other data for understanding the country’s
demographics,” Arokiasamy says.
Three moves by India’s government, which
is led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP), have heightened tensions
around collecting population data. BJP lead-
ers have vowed to create the National Regis-
ter of Citizens, a list of people who can prove,
through birth certificates or other ancestry
records, that they qualify for citizenship. Last
year, the party pushed through a law designed
to fast-track citizenship for religious minori-
ties fleeing from persecution in surrounding
countries—but pointedly excluded Muslims,
a minority group in India. In December 2019,
the government also added sensitive new
questions to a survey called the National
Population Register (NPR), last conducted in- The new NPR, to start in April, will ask
respondents when and where their parents
were born, for example; such information
can be used to determine citizenship. Many
observers believe the NPR is intended to help
construct the register of citizens.
The moves have sparked protests across
India, especially in Muslim communities,
where many people fear they do not have the
documents needed to prove citizenship, and
so will become stateless. When officials in the
border state of Assam created a register of
citizens last year, some 1.9 million residents,
including the family of a former president of
India, could not prove citizenship; the state
government has begun to build large deten-
tion camps, apparently to house noncitizens.
In some regions, residents have attacked
workers carrying out economic surveys or do-
ing public health work, mistakenly believing
they were collecting citizenship information.
Census watchers fear such problems could
escalate when the census begins next month,
in part because the government will conduct
the more controversial NPR at the same time.
“My worry is that ... people will confuse the
two [surveys] and refuse to give any informa-
tion,” Sen says. Ten of India’s 22 states have
passed resolutions opposing the NPR.
A faulty census would open a Pandora’s
box, experts say. Resistance to enumeration
could result in undercounts, especially in
Muslim communities, leading to reduced
funding. “I worry about the implications for
the well-being of Muslim communities,” says
sociologist Sonalde Desai of the University of
Maryland, College Park, and a senior fellow
at the National Council of Applied Economic
Research. “If they don’t cooperate with the
census, the data for that community will be
of poor quality, which could affect services.”
Flawed data could also reduce the reliabil-
ity of other surveys that rely on the census.
“Any subsequent survey or household data
becomes contaminated,” Sen says. And efforts
to fill in missing data by statistical tinkering
could be technically and politically fraught.
“We could do adjustments for undercounts,
but how well can we do it?” Desai asks.
“What would be the baseline data? Would the
adjustments be a political issue?” (It might
help, Desai says, if enumerators kept track of
people who refuse to be counted.)
Concerns about the census come as ex-
perts are already questioning some of India’s
other national data. Economists have raised
questions about the government’s gross do-
mestic product calculations, as well as de-
cisions to suppress or discard surveys that
reflect poorly on the economy. The Ministry
of Statistics and Programme Implementation
has set up a panel, chaired by Sen, to exam-
ine ways to improve the quality of economic
data. “We’re still taking stock of data sets on
the ground,” Sen says. “A lot depends on the
census and the economic census.”
BJP leaders, meanwhile, have tried to calm
protests by promising not to create the na-
tional registry of citizens any time soon. And
last week, the home minister told Parliament
that no one would be marked “D” for “doubtful
citizen” in the upcoming population survey.
But Sen and some 200 other experts say the
government should consider postponing the
NPR entirely. Time is running short: The first
phase of the census, which identifies house-
holds, is set to end in September, and the
second phase—which counts individuals—
will begin early next year. jVaishnavi Chandrashekhar is a journalist
in Mumbai, India.Unrest imperils India’s census
Opposition to citizenship policies could lead to undercount
STATISTICSAn enumerator collects data during India’s last
national census, in 2011.By Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar