COUNTING THE MASSES

ARTICLES- GENERAL
COUNTING THE MASSES

Census 2011 has begun. In India the census data is recorded once in 10 years and it is the 15th official census in India. Today the whole Indian population is all set to welcome the census. The latest census commenced on 1 April, 2010. It will create a National Population Register with photographs and fingerprints of every resident. All usual residents of India will also be provided with their Unique ID numbers and National Identity Cards. The census is carried out by the office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, Delhi, an office in the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, under the 1948 Census of India Act. In the first phase, accounting of the houses and details for the National Population Registration will be done, which began with the collection of details of President of India, Smt. Pratibha Patil. The second phase will be from 9th to 28th February 2011 wherein details of individual households will be collected.
Census is a Latin word, used in Roman Republic to keep record of the adult males fit for military services. It was a period when the people greatly feared census mounted. The youth were widely recruited and taken to England for services. This strengthened with the coming of railways. The world's oldest census data comes from China sometime before theXia Dynasty, over 4,000 years ago, counting some 13 million people. The first systematic census was conducted in United States of America in 1790. The first census in India in modern times was conducted in 1872.
A survey similar to Census was conducted in Kerala during 1816 to 1820 and in 1824 under Lieutenants Ward and Corner. In Travancore, the survey commenced during the reign of Gouri Lakshmi Bai as the reagent of Swati Thirunal. The first authoritative Census was organized by Swati Thirunal in 1836. The population grew by about four lakhs in the period from 1816 to 1836. Later a census was also conducted by Uthram Thirunal. Thus goes the census- story of Travancore.