India has 1.44 billion people, but has not made a census in 14 years. The result is “Massive Gap in Information”

While Suman Musadkar slowly walked the narrow earthen streets of the neighborhood in Mumbai, the most sufficient Indian city, she threw out a rough guess.

“The population is about 6,000 people in this area,” the Social Worker told CBC News before her voice was lagging behind. She was trying to think about how many children live in this part of Govanda, one of the poorest suburbs of Mumbai.

Musadkar does not know safely, because India has not spent the census since 2011, although the country should fill out a survey that has been following the growth of population and demographic changes every 10 years.

Before 2011, the national census was held once a decade since 1872.

“When we get the information, we understand how important it is,” Musadkar said, because the list gives purulent details, such as if “this house has a pregnant woman or that house has a breastfeeding mother … or a child who is malnourished.”

“If we have a list information, then we can come [people] In their homes, “said Musadkar, 46, who has been helping the residents of Slamov for 18 years.

“We can offer them the services they need.”

In 14 years since Indian officials last had a list, the country recorded rapid growth, overcoming China as the most sufficient nation in the world, with 1.44 billion people, according to the United Nations estimates.

A large country like India relies greatly on the patterns of survey to compile data, which is crucial to launching state financing and establishing economic data, the number of inflation and job assessment.

“The quality of samples is worse and worse as you are further removed from [last] The census, because the population is growing and people are moving, “said Senib, economist and former main statistician of India.

“There is a huge gap in information,” he told CBC News.

‘Worrying’

Collection of data on national research in 2021 was initially postponed due to the Pandemia Coid-19.

Sen called it “completely understandable”, but it pains to understand why, four years later, the process has not yet begun. Especially since the collection of data in all Indian regions requires a huge effort, including visits to more than 600,000 villages.

“That’s worrying,” Sen. said. “Things probably fall through cracks currently,” because the 2011 census information is unreliable.

Until recently, Sen led the Permanent Committee on the Statistics of the Indian Government, before it was quietly dissolved. Said CBC News that he and his colleagues in the Committee had brought a lack of updated data on the census at each meeting, questioning the delay in conducting a new poll.

Last September, the Indian Interior Minister Amit Shah said his government would start leading the “very fast” list, but there have been no updates ever since.

The main opposition party of Congress has repeatedly pressed the Government of Narendra Modi due to the lack of data on the census. The Sonia Gandhi Congress Senior Congress has re -launched this issue on Monday, during a parliamentary debate on the proposal of the Budget Act.

She claimed that 140 million Indians were deprived of their rights to receive assistance and free grain under the National Food Safety Act, because the population data to which the government rely so outdated.

CAST LISTAGE REQUIREMENTS

The Congress also requested that national research includes a “castin list”, which would shine the light of the lower caste, as established by the rigid Hindu system of the social hierarchy, holds positions or collected wealth.

This is a very political request. Social inequality in India is extreme and only deepened from pandemic, with the richest five percent of the Indians who have 60 percent of the country wealth, according to Oxfam International.

For decades, India has had an affirmative action program for the fight against the discrimination of caste and help those who are part of the marginalized caste to progress. But the need is only based on estimates.

India did not have a list of castes since 1931, when it was still under British rule, and Kasta specific findings collected during the last census of 2011 have never been published.

There were speculations in the newspaper that the current delay of the “tactical” list were One opinion suggesting that the Government had hoped that it would “be ejected from the list of the size of other residual classes”, an official expression in India for communities in an unfavorable position or lower caste.

The other claimed The delay is a very political choice, stating that “If the list was a priority, [the Modi government] He would rolling him immediately after the pandemic embarked on the road 2021. ”

Several academics of public policy based in Boston, Writing in Science the LancetHe concluded the delay of the list “raises doubts” and rejected the “recent pattern of the Indian Government to ignore or reject the unpleasant data provided by international research and ranking.”

Mammoth task

Furthermore, the pandemic has led to a huge migration in India – people who return to their villages from larger cities in which they worked.

“We don’t know where they went,” Sen. said. “They are widespread all over the country and we cannot contact them,” because the registration information on the list is so old.

The list of listings – or the list, such as known locally – will have to close the gap in information. But data collection logistics is one of the most complex in the world, given the size and population of India.

“We need to train 2.5 million list list,” Sen. “Finding these 2.5 million people become problematic, because public officers” must be borrowed from their regular duties on state and local government.

Civil servants should be left to the census for 18 months or so that they should monitor people and compile data.

“This is a big question,” Sen told local self -government.

While economists, academics and others have repeatedly expressed concern about the lack of list and what effect he had on India, Sen said that there were few responses of officials within the Government.

“Every ministry, especially those who operate in the provision of public benefits … should yell and scream” because of the lack of updated statistics, said Sen.

“I don’t even hear that.”