India began its first fully digital population count on April 1, mobilizing more than 3 million enumerators and opening a self-enumeration portal for citizens. Officials say the initial phase will focus on house listing and housing conditions, recording 33 data points such as construction materials, access to electricity and drinking water, and ownership of items like smartphones and vehicles. Each building will be geo-tagged to ensure complete geographic coverage and to map infrastructure across the country.
A second phase, scheduled for early next year, will collect detailed demographic and socio-economic information for every individual: age, education, occupation, migration history and fertility. For the first time since 1931, the census will also seek a comprehensive count of castes across all communities. Authorities stress the importance of the exercise for governance and development planning, saying the results will guide policy and resource allocation for the coming decade.
Between April 1 and April 15 citizens can submit their household details online through a government portal described as secure and available in 16 regional languages. The site is intended to let people enter information at their convenience before an enumerator follows up, reducing the time field staff need to spend on each household.
But the shift from paper to digital has raised significant concerns. Many residents in rural areas, particularly older adults and those with limited digital skills, may struggle with the online form and will still depend on enumerators. Critics question whether the vast corps of field staff will get enough time and training to reach and accurately record every household. There is also worry that households will be pressured to self-enumerate without adequate support, or that informal intermediaries will submit information on behalf of respondents.
Broader anxieties center on political uses of census data. The final counts, expected in 2027, will influence sensitive decisions such as caste-based reservations and the redrawing of parliamentary constituencies. Observers fear data could be skewed or manipulated with political objectives in mind.
Digitization changes the scale and speed of risk. Where paper-based manipulation tended to be local and slow to propagate, digital records flow into centralized systems almost instantly and can be combined with other national databases. The census now collects more granular and sensitive information than in previous rounds — including caste, religion, economic status and migration — increasing the potential consequences if safeguards fail.
Former chief election commissioner S Y Quraishi has warned that while the underlying risks are familiar, their reach increases with digital systems. He argues that the exercise’s credibility will depend less on technology than on transparency, independent audits and whether people perceive the process as fair and inclusive.
Economist Reetika Khera of IIT Delhi highlights that the problem is not digitization itself but the lack of robust safeguards, transparency and accountability measures to protect data integrity. Citing recent surveys, she notes low digital readiness in some communities: fewer than half of rural women over 15 own mobile phones, and while many use payment apps, almost none report comfort with tasks like net banking. Those gaps raise doubts about who can realistically use the self-enumeration portal without help.
Khera and others also flag the risk posed by intermediaries. In prior digital programs, middlemen have sometimes completed online tasks for others or enabled fraud. If such actors begin to offer “self-enumeration services,” they could become points of failure despite legal protections under the Census Act.
Some experts see the change as a structural shift in how the state measures and engages with its population. Yamini Aiyar, a visiting senior fellow at Brown University, warned that faster processing could let data be operationalized quickly and with limited public scrutiny, affecting the timing and outcomes of delimitation. She noted that the census was delayed from 2021 by the pandemic and that the push to publish results by 2027 has not been fully explained, which feeds suspicions about sequencing and intent.
That unease is particularly pronounced in several southern states, where officials fear that updated population figures could alter the balance of political representation in favor of states with faster population growth, shifting influence northward.
Development economist Dipa Sinha acknowledges India’s experience with digital surveys, such as the National Sample Survey, but says the census’s scale is unique and the long delay has increased scrutiny. She points out that clear protocols for data protection, privacy and error correction have not been fully articulated, and that in a census collecting highly sensitive personal details, the absence of explicit safeguards could undermine public confidence.
As India undertakes its first end-to-end digital census, experts emphasize that rolling out new technology is only one part of the task. Adequate training for enumerators, strong privacy protections, mechanisms to prevent intermediaries and fraud, transparent auditing, and efforts to build public trust are essential if the count is to be credible and broadly accepted.
Edited by Darko Janjevic