Thread: With the Indian state, there are always two things going on - mala fide behaviour and incompetence/ lack of capacity. There's good reason to fear that the NPR will suffer from both. The bad intent is on clear display. The lack of capacity we know of from the Census.
In 2011, the Census missed 23 people for every 1,000 it counted. And this is its own estimation. In comparison, the US Census overcounted 0.001 person for every 1,000 persons it counted. We missed 28 million people in all.
This was no better than the 2001 Census, i.e. there was no improvement in omission rates between the two Census. We have poor granular data on omissions (unlike the US which knows it undercounted racial minorities and overcounted white people), but here's what we know:
Illiterate (ie) urban men and women were most likely to be missed. Central and northern India missed the most people. Young children were missed at high rates (similar to the US), as were those not at the nucleus of the family.
All of that in my piece for Mint today here: livemint.com/news/india/cen…
The Census has made the NPR-NRC link pretty clear even if others want to dance around it (here's a reminder: censusindia.gov.in/2011-Common/FA…). The NPR will definitely leave out people. It's not very hard to see why people fear it and experts have sounded an alarm about data quality(ends)
