Census Fact File
First Census conducted in India: 1872.
Census 2011: 15th National Census of India.
Conducted by: The Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, under the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India.
Unique feature: Only source of primary data at village, town and ward level.
The census results:
Till the 1991 Census entire data processing took more than 5 years
In the 2001 Census time taken was reduced to around 3 years
For the 2011 Census efforts are being made to reduce the processing time to about
1.5 years.
Census 2011 provisional population totals: Announced on 31 March 2011.
Census data used for:
- Formulation of policies by central and state governments;
- Delimitation/reservation of constituencies;
- Reviewing country’s progress in the past decade;
- Monitoring the ongoing governmental schemes; etc.
Census Concepts and Definitions
Urban area
(a) All statutory places with a municipality, corporation, cantonment board or notified town area committee, etc.
(b) A place satisfying the following three criteria simultaneously:
- i) a minimum population of 5,000;
- ii) at least 75 per cent of male working population engaged in non agricultural pursuits; and
iii) a density of population of at least 400 per sq km.
Institutional Household
A group of unrelated persons who live in an institution and take their meals from a common kitchen e.g. boarding houses, messes, hostels, hotels, rescue homes, jails, ashrams, orphanages, etc.
Houseless Households
Households who do not live in buildings or census houses but live in the open on roadside, pavements, in huge pipes, under fly overs and staircases, or in the open in places of worship, mandaps, railway platforms, etc.
Main Workers
Those workers who had worked for the major part of the reference period (before the census enumeration) i.e. 6 months or more.
Marginal Workers
Those workers who had not worked for the major part of the reference period, i.e. less than 6 months.
Work Participation Rate
The percentage of total workers (main and marginal) to total population.
Other Workers
All workers, i.e., those who have
been engaged in some economic activity during the last one year,
but are not cultivators or agricultural labourers or in household industry.
Household Industry
An industry conducted by one or more members of the household at home or within the village in rural areas and only within the precincts of the house where the household lives in urban areas.
Child Sex Ratio (0-6 years)
The number of females in age group 0 to 6 years per 1000 males in the same age group in the population. It is expressed as ‘number of female children age (0-6) years per 1000 male children age (0-6) years’.
Literacy Rate
The percentage of literates to the
total population age 7 years and above.
Migration Rate
The ratio of total migrants
counted in the census to its total population multiplied by 1000. While discussing the migration result, the term population
mobility is taken as a synonym to migration rate.
