First census in India conducted from 1865 to 1872

Updated on: Monday, April 11, 2011

What are the earliest evidences of a census in India?

The Rig-Veda mentions a population count and Kautilyas Arthashastra has prescribed methods of collecting various socio-economic statistics which can be used by tax officials. The Mughals also maintained extensive records of land, production, population, famines and so on. As the main purpose of the data collection was related to taxation, the fall of a big empire and the subsequent political void resulted in the absence of any record for a long period. The first modern census was conducted between 1865 and 1872 in different parts of the country in a non-synchronous way. The efforts culminated in 1872 and hence the year is dubbed as the year of the first population census in India. Synchronous census started since 1881 and since then there has been no interruption with 2011 being the 15th version of the continuous census series.

Why is the census so important?

The census is a statutory exercise conducted under the provisions of the Census Act 1945. Since 1872, the census is considered the most credible source of information about demography, literacy, standards of living, degree of urbanization, languages spoken, fertility, mortality and various other socio-cultural aspects. Although the common perception about census is that it is a sheer headcount of people, it is the only source of primary data at village, town and ward level. The census also provides the parameters for reviewing the country's progress and helps the government in assessing the impact of ongoing schemes. It thus provides information which is used by the government for planning and formulation of polices. Census data is also widely used by other non-government agencies, scholars, business people and journalists.

How has the census evolved over the years?

The methodology has witnessed substantial changes. Various terms used in collecting the data kept getting modified, new terms were introduced while a few redundant and misleading statistics was dropped. For instance, the definition of a house was changed in 1881, 1951, 1961 and 1971 and house which in 1872 was defined as any permanent structure which would serve for the accommodation of human beings, animals, or goods became a building having a separate main entrance from the road in 1971. New parameters have been introduced periodically. For instance, the category of divorce was introduced in 1941, caste was dropped in 1931 and there were several other changes to make the data more accurate and suited to the changing times. The new millenniums first census conducted in 2001 was the first in which all tabulations were based on a nearly 100% count. In previous censuses, sampling was used to estimate some of the parameters.

What were the main figures released in the Census 2011s provisional data?

The recently released data was related to population, sex ratio and the literacy rate. Gender is a sensitive issue in India as well as other parts of Asia because these countries are facing a serious dearth of female population and their weight is also skewing the worlds gender balance. The gender balance is assessed by calculating the sex ratio, which is defined as the number of females per thousand males. The overall sex ratio can be deceptive at times, because in a country like India the wide variation in the income levels of people in different regions results in internal migration. As the majority of migrants are males, the sex ratio of the urban and commercial areas gets skewed in favour of males. The concept of child sex ratio was introduced to avoid this discrepancy and data is also collected to calculate the sex ratio of children who are in the 0 to 6 years age band. This not only helps in nullifying the impact of migration on the data, but also helps in understanding the cascading effect of this age group on population over a period of time.

Times of India

First census in India conducted from 1865 to 1872

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