What You'll be Asked in New Census Forms? Cooking Gas, Drinking Water, Internet Devices, Disability & More

What caused your physical disability, if any? What stream of education did you study? Do you have access to toilets? Do you have LPG or PNG connections? Do you have access to the internet? Do you own a house but don’t live in it? Do you have DTH connection? Do you drink packaged water? What is the main cereal consumed by your family? These are some of the new questions you can expect to answer when a Census officer visits you in the next few months.

The exercise to collect data for the 2021 Census was scheduled to be carried out across the country from April 1 to September 30, 2020, but was postponed due to the Covid-19 outbreak. The new schedule is yet to be notified but the housing listing phase of the Census is expected to be carried out soon, with significant changes in the Census form.

According to an e-book launched by the Registrar General of India, the form for the mammoth decennial exercise would now include elaborate questions, the major additions being details on disabilities and cooking gas connections. The government is also reportedly planning to give people the option of filling the form online.

According to the official questionnaire, the Census officer would seek to know whether a disability has been caused by an acid attack or is the result of a blood disorder, chronic neurological disorder or whether it is an intellectual disability. The last Census, held in 2011, did not mention these options.

In an important change, the new form replaces the phrase ‘mental retardation’ under the Disability column with ‘intellectual disability’.

When giving details of educational qualifications, respondents would have to mention the streams they were educated in — IT, engineering, science, management etc. Similarly, the education column will add more options to specify the highest degree attained — Bachelor, Post-Graduate, M Phil, PhD etc.

Citizens will also have to tell Census officials, and in turn the government, whether they have LPG or PNG connections for cooking purposes. The earlier forms only sought to know whether the respondent had a kitchen of their own and did not venture into what kind of cooking gas they had access to.

The new form further seeks to know what kind of TV connection the citizens have and if they have DTH connections. It also includes questions on internet connections and what devices — laptops, computers, smartphones – people use to access the internet.

The questionnaire will have options of six religions — Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist and Jain. For other religions, the form gives the option to write the name of the religion in full, but does not assign any code to it. Apart from their mother tongue, citizens can list two other languages they are fluent in.

Other questions include whether people consume packaged or bottled water as one of the main sources of drinking water at home and the main cereal consumed by the family.

The e-book, which contains detailed information about Censuses to date and the yet-to-be-carried-out 2021 Census, is titled A Treatise on Indian Censuses Since 1981 and was released by Union Home Minister Amit Shah. It was released to mark the inauguration of Janganana Bhawan, the new office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India. The occasion marked 150 years of existence for the Census office.