July 29, 2021
India’s upcoming 2021 census will be the country’s first-ever digital one and that’s problematic.
The Narendra Modi government has developed a mobile app for collecting data as well as a
portal for management and monitoring of various census-related activities, Nityanand Rai, minister of state for home affairs, wrote in response to a question in Rajya Sabha (upper house of parliament) on July 28.
An online census mechanism was first mentioned by home affairs minister Amit Shah in September 2020. In February 2021, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman allocated a budget of Rs3,786 crore ($509 million) to it.
The census, first conducted in 1872 in India, is the largest repository of the nation’s people, covering everything from demographics like age, gender, and marital status, to housing and economic activity. It is the only source of primary data at the village, town, and ward levels. It plays a huge part in the planning and formulation of policies for not
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Now that the worldwide coverage of India’s crisis over oxygen, ICU beds and medicine is concentrating minds in officialdom, public health and medical planners would do well to anticipate the next big steps in managing the Covid-19 crisis, both for this second wave and the third wave that will follow almost inevitably. The principal crisis going forward will be the shortage of medical professionals.
How can this be addressed? Cardiac surgeon Devi Shetty made some sensible suggestions at a recent webinar about mobilising trained nursing and medical students waiting for their exams and incentivising them to work in Covid-19 units for at least a year. The broad numbers suggest that this is a simple and do-able way forward,