Do you consume packaged or bottled water? The Census wants to know. This will be one of the new questions in the next Census, which will also introduce “natural calamities” as a new option when asking about the factors responsible for the migration of an individual or a family, apart from existing options such as education, marriage, work or business.
Despite demands from several communities to be counted as a separate religion, the next Census will only count Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Sikh and Jain as distinct religion options.
Nature-worshipping Adivasis in Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, and Odisha have been campaigning to include their Sarna faith as a separate religion, while Karnataka’s Lingayats have been making a similar demand.
