Economists Warn India Against Conflating Census, Citizens’ Data
A group of economists caution against clubbing data collection for the National Population Register with the census exercise.
(Bloomberg) -- A group of economists have cautioned India’s government against clubbing data collection for its controversial citizens’ register with the census exercise, saying it could have implications for the nation’s statistical system.
The census is a basic household and population list based on anonymous data, whereas there are fears the National Population Register could be used to question a person’s citizenship, according to an open letter to the government by 190 economists including Jayati Ghosh, a professor at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Maitreesh Ghatak of the London School of Economics.
Conducting the population register along with the census violates the rules of the Census Act 1948 that bars anyone from accessing “any book, register or record made by a census-officer in the discharge of his duty,” they said, adding the law also prohibits using census data as evidence in any civil proceeding.
India’s new religion-based citizenship law fast-tracks citizenship for religious minorities from three neighboring nations but excludes Muslims. Taken together with a proposed national register of citizens, the new law is seen as a way for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to marginalize Muslims. Protests against the law led to riots in the national capital last month, in which at least 46 people were killed. Government officials collecting socio-economic data for census have faced harassment from people due to fears the data might be used to establish their citizenship, according to media reports.
The economists urged the government to ensure the census exercise is safe and uncontaminated by any other factors and to abandon data collection for the population register that could contain demographic as well as biometric particulars.
To contact the reporter on this story: Vrishti Beniwal in New Delhi at vbeniwal1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nasreen Seria at nseria@bloomberg.net, Karthikeyan Sundaram, Ruth Pollard
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