Data, Development and Democracy: The Political Economy of the Indian Census

Vikas Kumar

Review of Development and Change, 2024, vol. 29, issue 2, 145-155

Abstract: India’s ability to conduct large-scale modern scientific exercises such as decennial population censuses with clockwork precision and unparalleled regularity is widely regarded as a source of collective national pride. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the regular schedule of the census, and it is not clear when the indefinitely postponed 2021 Census will be held. The present study uses this pause to explore the evolution of the Census of India and examine the quality of its data over the past few decades followed by a discussion of potential reforms including rationalisation of schedules to adapt the exercise to meet emerging challenges.

Keywords: Census; data; democracy; development; population (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09722661241303743 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:revdev:v:29:y:2024:i:2:p:145-155

DOI: 10.1177/09722661241303743

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Review of Development and Change
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().