Written by Aaina Saini
In 1947, India was left to pick up the pieces of the Partition – the tip of the iceberg of a colonial legacy which had determined the course of the subcontinent for over 200 years. India was amputated into divided nations, and migration and mass killing ensued. Yet the government of newly independent India still conducted an extensive census exercise to document the situation of each of its citizens just 4 years later.
In 1971, when India was knee-deep into the Bangladesh Liberation war and mobilised its army to defend a neighbour, a team of remarkable statisticians still oversaw the census. And then the Indians found themselves in the grave economic crises of 1991 which threatened bankruptcy for almost 800 million people. Yet the census was still conducted
In 2021, for the first time in the history of independent, or even colonial India, the decennial census has been postponed. Now, more than once. Fine, they said they couldn’t send enumerators home during the Covid-19 pandemic for the safety of the citizens; we understood. However, now standing 4 years after the scheduled date of the census, little effort has been made to conduct this long overdue exercise.
This naturally makes one wonder if this is a deliberate move by the populist Hindu-nationalist BJP-led government. If safety was as paramount as one is forced to interpret by constant data collection delays, then I guess conducting elections in populous states in India during Covid-19 such as Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Bengal, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and so on which saw congregations of thousands of people – where our beloved Prime Minister, Narendra Modi himself campaigned must be quite safe.
And of course, to question the hosting of the Kumbh Mela, a large Hindu religious pilgrimage festival, during the second wave of Covid-19 in 2021 which attracted a record amount of 3.5 million people must mean I am a bad Hindu!
So, what is Narendra Modi so afraid of? Everything. It’s as they say, out of sight, out of mind! If the census were to be conducted, the idyllic image of a perfect ‘Hindu Nation’ with no poverty and increased benefits from GDP growth to each citizen he has sold to the Indian population for the past 10 years will come crumbling down.
This Hindutva-frenzy government has significantly benefited from the racial divides set up by the colonial government to earn the favour of India’s largely Hindu majority. They put the second largest religious community in India under the bus, accusing them of stealing jobs. In one of his election campaigns last year, Modi referred to Muslims as ‘infiltrators’ and ‘those who have more children’, implying that there is a significant increase in the number of Muslims in India that threatens the jobs of ‘Hindu natives’.
However, critics of government statistics prove that between 1951 and 2011, the Muslim population rose from 35.4 million to 172 million. A noteworthy increase for sure, but the double standard is palpable when you consider that the Hindu population rose from 303 million to 966 million in the same period – a five times greater increase.
The aversion to a census by the BJP runs much deeper than dismantling their distorted views on Indian religion statistics. It’s not just the census data that is lacking – the Modi government has actively led an age of misinformation and lack of credible datasets. Whether it be the lack of information on how many migrant workers perished in commuting back home during 2020 or the shortly after seen deaths due to lack of oxygen in hospitals in the second wave of Covid – the point is the government either has no idea or refuses to share the data in an attempt of face saving and it is hard to argue which alternative is worse.
A WHO report suggests that 4.7 million people died as a result of the pandemic in India- 10 times more than official statistics suggest – so much for the safety of the people I guess!
To add further shame, the Indian government outrightly denied such figures and when met with resistance to provide their own; met academics with the same response: we do not know.
The question ultimately boils down to ‘what DO we know?’
We do know that people of India are hungry and are denied access to food due to the government’s constant failures. Beneficiaries under the 2014 Food Security Act are based on the 2011 census, where it is estimated that 100 million people have been excluded since the government conveniently claims that it shall wait for the new census to add new beneficiaries – one which I believe is never to come.
Furthermore, the demands for a caste census that would shed light on social mobility in India for historically marginalised communities are increasing by opposition parties in Parliament and the BJP staunchly refuses to conduct such an exercise claiming that it shall lead to divisive politics, which I call bullshit. This peace-loving BJP has already done enough for the ‘unity’ of the nation and it must stop now.
Prolonged conversations about whether to include a caste census or not to the list of census questions is yet another tactic to delay the information we demand. While a caste census shall disclose valuable information; it is pointless if such deliberations only lead to a further data lag and could possibly be something that could be picked on in future censuses. What we need right now, is even an iota of real, credible data that the nation can use to bring its people out of the dark whose views on politics are clouded by false data and propaganda.
Last summer, I worked as a research intern at government think tank NITI Aayog (literally Policy Commision in Hindi), where I discovered that we no longer conduct consumption data. We do not collect several other forms of data that the National Statistical Survey Office (NSSO) used to collect for industries, severely impacting the policies designed since most of them rely upon estimates and projections – all of which remain unverifiable. National Crime Records, road accident statistics are just a few examples of the union government data that continues to remain unavailable and as an economist, I continue to ask year after year: where is the data? In such an ethnically divided country, what kind of effective policy in 2025 can come from population statistics collected in 2011?
Bad data, or lack thereof, leads to bad policy. And I, as an Indian, have had enough bad policy. I think the ultimate point is – it’s a shit show. It isn’t happening. The constant postponement is not circumstantial but deliberate, and deliberations over the caste census (possibly well intentioned by the opposition) do nothing but kick the can down the road, keeping Indians away from the truth for as long as it possibly can.
What is at stake is credible data for an entire decade, one which has been marked by a significant governance shift and with no data to document the true effect! This shift has disastrous effects on India’s population, but really, seems to suit Mr. Modi just fine.
