Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India
Abbreviation | RGCCI |
---|---|
Formation | 1961 |
Type | Official Census organisation |
Headquarters | Jai Singh Road, New Delhi, Delhi – 110001 |
Region served | India |
Registrar General & Census Commissioner | Mritunjay Kumar Narayan, IAS[1] |
Parent organisation | Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India |
Website | Official Website |
Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, founded in 1961 by the Government of India Ministry of Home Affairs, for arranging, conducting and analysing the results of the demographic surveys of India including Census of India and Linguistic Survey of India. The position of Registrar is usually held by a civil servant holding the rank of Joint Secretary.
History
The Indian Census is the largest single source of a variety of statistical information on different characteristics of the people of India.
The first census of India was conducted in the 1872 and attempted to collect data across as much of the country as was feasible. The first of the decennial censuses took place in 1881. Until 1961, responsibility for arranging, conducting and analysing the results of the census was exercised by a temporary administrative structure that was put in place for each census and then dismantled. From that time on, the office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India has existed as a permanent department of central government; each state and union territory has a supervisory Directorate of Census Operations.[2]
British Raj period
Attempts to enumerate population in parts of the Indian subcontinent and, more important, to assess landholdings for revenue purposes, existed before the British Raj and are attested in writings such as those of
The conduct of censuses in India by the British Raj administration significantly influenced the culture of the country. Peter Gottschalk says that:
... classifications of convenience for government officials transformed into contested identities for the Indian public as the census went from an enumerative exercise of the British government to an authoritative representation of the social body and a vital tool of indigenous interests. All of this pivoted on the fact that statistical comparison in British India relied upon a purportedly scientific classificatory system dissimilar to Indic antecedents yet similar to that of medieval Europe: focused on mutually exclusive, essence-defined, religious categories.[6]
1891
Jervoise Athelstane Baines was in charge of the 1891 census. He adjusted the classification system.[7]
1901
The Census Commissioner for 1901 was
1911
1931
In 1929, J. H. Hutton was given the office of Commissioner for the 1931 census. Aside from performing his official duties in the compilation of the subsequent report, he used the experience when writing his personal work, Caste in India, that was published in 1946.[10] The first ever caste based census in India was done in 1931.[11] He encouraged administrators of the Indian Civil Service to write about the various communities with which they were familiar and Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf says that "... some of the arguments and cultural parallels contained in Part 1 [of the 1931 census report] advanced novel theories perhaps more appropriate to a learned journal that to the pages of an official census report."[12]
1941
The census was not a success. It was hampered by the fact that World War II was ongoing and by India's literacy and education standards. Those standards made it unfeasible to permit self-enumeration by the respondents but the costs and time involved in training enumerators to act on their behalf had not been offset against the perceived benefits of adopting the sampling method. Very little data was produced other than figures for total population and, says Mitra, "The tabulations of the [sampled] results on machines were so botched and delayed that even by 1954, no complete tabulations ... had been made. The final results defied coherent interpretation at the state or national level."[13]
Post-independence
1951
The importance of large quantities of detailed and varied demographic data increased as India moved towards adoption of
1961
In discussions concerning the census of 1961, Mahalanobis tried once more to cause the adoption of a sampling system. Ashok Mitra had been appointed Commissioner for this census and he, too, was able to counter the idea after demonstrating how cross-checks of the data were performed.[13]
See also
- Scientific racism
- 2011 Census of India
References
Notes
- ^ William Wilson Hunter had commenced work on what became the Statistical Account of Bengal around 1869 but it was not completed until a few years after the first all-India census;[5] Francis Buchanan-Hamilton had conducted a limited survey of the region in the early 1800s.[4]
Citations
- ^ "Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India".
- ISBN 9788175330283.
- ISBN 9780195393019.
- ^ ISBN 9780195393019.
- ISBN 978-0-7190-6018-2.
- ISBN 9780195393019.
- ^ JSTOR 2341501.(subscription required)
- Risley, Sir Herbert Hope (1915) [1908]. Crooke, William (ed.). The People of India(Memorial ed.). Calcutta: Thacker, Spink. Retrieved 8 August 2011.
- JSTOR 29789312. (subscription required)
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/53568. Retrieved 8 November 2013. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ "No data since 1931, will 2011 Census be all-caste inclusive?". The Times of India. 11 March 2010.
- JSTOR 3031708. (subscription required)
- ^ JSTOR 4402155. (subscription required)
Further reading
- Maheshwari, Shriram (1996). The Census Administration Under the Raj and After. Concept Publishing. ISBN 9788170225850.