15th Indian National census

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Scope and process
Spread across 35 States and Union Territories, the Census covered 640 districts, 5767 tehsils, 7742 towns and more than 6 lac villages. 2.7 million officials visited households in 7,935 towns and 6,40,867 villages, classifying the population according to gender, religion, education and occupation.[1] The cost of the was in the region of 2,200 crore (US$490.6 million) – this comes to less than $ 0.5 per person, well below the estimated world average of $4.6 per person.[1] The exercise, conducted every 10 years, faced big challenges, not least India's vast area and diversity of cultures and opposition from the manpower is involved.

Inclusion of caste
Information on castes was included in the census following demands from several ruling coalition leaders including Lalu Prasad Yadav, Sharad Yadav and Mulayam Singh Yadav supported by opposition parties Bharatiya Janata Party, Akali Dal, Shiv Sena and Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.[2] Information on caste was last collected during the British Raj in 1931. During the early census, people often exaggerated their caste status to garner social status and it is expected that people downgrade it now in the expectation of gaining government benefits.[3]
There is only one instance of a caste-count in post-independence India. It was conducted in Kerala in 1968 by the Communist government under E. M. S. Namboodiripad to assess the social and economic backwardness of various lower castes. The census was termed Socio-Economic Survey of 1968 and the results were published in the Gazetteer of Kerala, 1971.[4]