The Parliamentary Committee on Home Affairs has said that the coming census exercise “should not merely be data-oriented; rather it should portray the perspective of culture and society.”
Members of the panel felt that since the current census has not commenced yet, an effort should be made on the part of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) through the Registrar General of India (RGI) to obtain data on such parameters as well as was being collected or reflected in the census reports in the pre-Independence era.
“The Committee was given to understand by the Ministry that the method of obtaining census data through questionnaire still continues and the number of questions in the census have actually been increased since Independence. However, the annual reports given by the provincinal registrars/ officers and even the RGI regarding the census process, etc., have not been written for few censuses,” the report tabled in the Rajya Sabha on Monday said.
