Census 2021: Officials to ask 'what cereal do you consume'?

New Delhi, Jan 10: The census exercise, which begins on April 1 this year, will have some interesting questions on your food habits, including the main cereal used in household consumption.

The enumerators will also seek information related to toilets, TV, the Internet, vehicles owned, source of drinking water. However, the information on the main cereal consumed in the household, being sought for the first time as part of Census exercise to know the food habits of the people.

According to the notification, the Registrar General and Census Commissioner information that will be sought from every household is: whether the family owns a telephone, mobile phone, smartphone, radio or transistor, television, laptop or computer, information on the internet, bicycle, scooter, motorcycle, moped, car or jeep or van.

However, the centre has made it clear that the mobile number will be sought only for census-related communications and not for any other purpose.

Questions related to the census house number, predominant material of the floor, wall and roof of the census house, building number (municipal or local authority or census number).

The census will also include information on the head of the household belongs to a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe or Other categories, ownership status of the census house, number of dwelling rooms.

Enumerators will also ask the question whether the family has bathing facility, LPG/PNG connection and main fuel used for cooking, access to a toilet, the type of toilet, wastewater outlet, availability of bathing facility, availability of kitchen.

Shunning the old practices of pen and paper, the 2021 census will be conducted through a mobile phone application.

The census will have its reference date as March 1, 2021. Snow-bound states like Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand it will be October 1, 2020.

The central government has also decided to conduct the National Population Register.

The NPR is a census that would be conducted from house to house. This would be conducted from across the country from April 1, 2020, to September 30, 2020.

The aim of the NPR is to create data on the comprehensive identification of the common residents of the country. The data would also comprise biometric information along with the demographics.