Census Footsoldiers

Shimla

Ashwani Sharma

IN his schooldays,Hem Raj was never an early riser. But his ease in climbing up and down treacherous mountain slopes ensured he reached school before everyone else did.

The skill is coming in handy now as the 28-year-old,a teacher at a primary school in Patiana and one of the thousands of enumerators and supervisory staff conducting the Census in Himachal Pradesh,walks several miles a day,going from house to house.

In this rural belt of Pandra-Bees,everybody,except those who have their homes in the orchards,leaves early for work. So,enumerators like Hem Raj make it a point to knock on their doors as early as possible. “Sometimes we have to make two or three rounds of a particular house if there is no elder member or head of the family at home,” says Hem Raj.

Beginning his day at seven in the morning,his work takes him across three development blocks of Rampur. He returns home after sunset,but on days that his work finishes late,he prefers to stay back in the village.

Pandra-Bees in Shimla district’s Rampur sub-division is over 250 km from the state capital. Perched at over 9,000 ft,it is one of Himachal’s most inaccessible and backward regions. Covering about 13 villages,its total population touches about 8,000. There is no irrigation facility here,health infrastructure is missing and the literacy rate at 54 per cent is low—the state average is 83 per cent.

Until a decade ago,it was barely connected by road and was left out of the loop of all development. Things haven’t changed much. Road connectivity remains poor and enumerators walk hours to reach scattered hamlets atop high mountains,close to the snowline.

After a steep six-kilometre walk,Hem Raj reaches the house of 60-year-old Dev Dassi and her family of ten,in village Deothi. As he pulls out the forms,Dassi begins answering his questions. But the first stumbling block comes soon. Dassi can’t remember her date of birth. Hem Raj turns to her family. “We have options either to fill in the actual date of birth or the “declared” date,” he says.

To make the enumerators’ task easy,the Census Department in Himachal has also circulated a list of prominent identifiable dates like Himachal Day (April 15,1948),Himachal Statehood Day (January 25,1971),Kangra Earthquake (1905),etc.,to help people figure out their date of birth in reference to these.

Since Dassi is illiterate,Hem Raj takes the help of her 15-year-old grandson to fill the house-listing form that has 35 questions and the other form for the National Population Register (NPR). It takes him nearly two hours to fill in the details. Dassi fumbles over some of the questions but her grandson rushes to her rescue.

Enumerators in Himachal,who set out to work on April 7,have covered 60 per cent of the households by now. With the first phase of house-listing and NPR data collection in the state’s non-tribal areas to end on May 22,the exercise for the snow-covered tribal belt—Kinnaur,Lahaul-Spiti,Pangi and Bharmaur—will begin on June 1 and end in 45 days.

What’s ‘Anusoochit Jati’ in Gujarati?

Tanvir A Siddiqui

For Rajnibhai Parmar,a teacher in a private high school,it’s a first. Yet the 42-year-old seems at ease as he hops on to his bicycle to go from door to door collecting Census data in Pareekshitlal Nagar,a lower- to middle-income group area in Danilimda ward of south Ahmedabad. For the month-and-a-half-long exercise during which he will survey 160 households,he expects he’ll be paid around Rs 6,500.

Pareekshitlal Nagar—Parmar,one of the 1,16,000 enumerators in Gujarat for Census 2011,lives in the area—has its share of problems. Most residents are autorickshaw drivers or labourers in the many scrap yards in the area. The area has a mixed community profile and has been witness to the worst riots. Though it is home to a number of politicians from both the major political parties,that has meant nothing for this cluster of 30 blocks plagued by water-borne diseases and poor water supply. Connectivity with western Ahmedabad has improved only now,after the construction of Ambedkar Bridge,two km away,across the river Sabarmati.

Parmar arrives at block No. 6 at 8.30 in the morning. His target is to cover at least 15 households in a day. As he steps into Abdul Karim Sai’s one-room house,he is greeted by a goat. Sai,71,emerges,clad in a lungi and vest,with henna-dyed hair and children of all sizes in tow. “How many children?” Parmar asks,and Sai starts counting,not getting it right the first time. There are nine of them—some married—all of whom have studied up to Class 8. Two of his sons are mechanics,and two work in scrap shops. A handprinting worker,Sai’s house has plaster peeling off everywhere. They have a black-and-white TV set but no LPG connection. Other details are so mixed-up that Parmar has to use his eraser more than the pencil.

Next door,the women occupants,who observe purdah,don’t come out. Sai volunteers to help,bringing a photocopy of their ration card,and Parmar jots down data. “I have seen three Census surveys before this but this is the most comprehensive. Earlier,enumerators would finish within minutes,” says Sai.

Language is another problem. Most people have never heard the phrase ‘Anusoochit Jati’ (scheduled caste) and it is a challenge to explain it to them.

The next house has a cooler and two fans,a sink in the verandah and a wall unit with a colour TV. The occupants are a father-daughter duo. The father,Abdul Rehman Rajkotwala,is a widower. His sons live separately but take care of his needs. Rajkotwala complains that a ration card has been denied to him for several years now. The enumerator has a ready reply: “I am here just to count people,not problems.”

Walking a thin line

Samudra Gupta Kashyap

ANYWHERE you walk in Bishkhowa,you see barbed wire,two parallel rows of it to keep out ‘outsiders’. Today,Gauranga Adhikari walked along the barbed fence,down the road moist from last night’s downpour. The 43-year-old middle-school teacher is a Census enumerator,one of the hundreds in the state,and has a job at hand—reach out to every single person in Bishkhowa,a village on the Indo-Bangladesh border that’s 35 km from the district headquarters of Dhubri and about 340 km from Guwahati.

Since the beginning of this month,Adhikari,who is also from the area,has been setting out every morning at 11 to the area assigned to him—Bishkhowa Part IV,one of the five villages that make up Bishkhowa.

The district of Dhubri,which shares 135 km of international border with Bangladesh,has always drawn a lot of attention during Census operations,especially since it is said to be a gateway for illegal infiltration. In the 2001 Census,the five villages of Bishkhowa together registered a population of 5,681.

“I cover six to seven houses every day. There are two questionnaires to be filled up—one,the Census houselisting form and the other,the NPR (National Population Register) form. It takes me anywhere between 40 minutes to one hour to get the answers from one household,” says Adhikari,a pink pen in hand and a black Census bag slung over his shoulder.

The whole of Assam will have to be covered between by May 15.

Adhikari makes his first stop at House No C 93(1). The head of the household,Kechal Barman,welcomes him by placing a chair in the muddy courtyard and Adhikari gets to work straight away: “Age?” “I think I am around 65.” And his wife Praneswari? “She was about five years younger than me when we got married. I think she is still five years younger to me,” Barman says and laughs at his own joke.

Floor of the house? “Kutcha.” Wall? “Bamboo.” Roof? “Tin sheets”. Toilet? “We go to the fields.”

Adhikari is not the kind to get distracted—this is his third Census as an enumerator. Radio? “No.” TV? “No.” Mobile,computer? “You are asking about a computer? Look at our house. One more hoorka (thunder-squall) and this house will collapse,” says Barman.

Barman’s eldest son Suresh,who lives in another house in the same compound,claims he is around 37. But he has no documents to prove his age. So Barman writes down ‘37’ as Suresh’s “declared age”. Father of three children,Suresh could not produce their birth certificates. “We do have our son Biswajit’s birth certificate,but can’t find it,” he says. “And we never got them made for our daughters Moromi and Binita.”

A little away from the Barmans is a cluster of three Muslim households. In the first house,he finds a physically challenged Jaynal Sheikh,who runs a small cycle repair shop in the village. Sheikh says he is 27 but has no documents to prove it. But he is quick with the other details for both the forms—nationality,father’s name,mother’s name,nature of household,etc.

In the same courtyard,Adhikari goes to the houses of Sheikh’s brothers—Jalal and Billal. “Come when their father is at home,” says Jalal’s wife. The brothers have gone to a relative’s house in Rakhalpat.

Being on the border,Dhubri district has experienced a very high decadal variation of population. While the district’s population increased by only 9.25 per cent during 1941-1951,it jumped by 27.62 per cent in 1951-61. During 1961-71 it went up by 40.51 per cent,and then further up to 56.57 per cent during 1971-91.

Dhubri also happens to be the district with the highest Muslim population in Assam. While Muslims constitute 30.9 per cent of Assam’s total population,the percentage of Muslims in Dhubri district has risen from 68.46 per cent in 1991 to 74.29 per cent in 2001,according to the 2001 Census.

Census,what’s that?

SHAJU PHILIP

AFTER parking his motorcycle under a tree,KH Sreenivas follows a narrow mud path over the slope of a hill. He stops when he reaches an unplastered,tiled house in Chennikkodu village.

A young man,Sundara Moolya,appears at the door. “Why have you come?” he asks. “To take the jana ganathi (Census),’’ replies 37-year-old Sreenivas,an upper primary school teacher,one of the 59,000 enumerators in Kerala for Census 2011. But Moolya doesn’t appear totally convinced.

“Every ten years,the government documents how many people live in each house. Do you have the details of the family members ready?” asks Sreenivas,stepping onto the verandah to scribble a number on the door.

Sundara lives with his father Babu Moolya and two brothers,Narayana and Sreenivas. As enumerator Sreenivas begins asking questions,Narayana Moolya looks back clueless. Seeing a two-wheeler in the courtyard,the enumerator asks Sundara for his driving licence,so he can get the date of his birth. Sundara,meanwhile,had no idea that the driving licence carried his birth date.

Chennikkodu village under Puthige panchayat in the North Kerala district of Kasargode,is 592 km from state capital Thiruvananthapuram. Inhabited by marginal farmers,beedi rollers and farm hands,people in the village are schooled in Kannada,but speak Tulu,like the majority of Kasargode villagers who live near the Karnataka border.

Sreenivas,who belongs to this region,joined the Census exercise on April 16 after a three-day training. The exercise ends on May 27.

Sreenivas’s next stop is the house of Moolya’s eldest son Sangappa. “I have no idea when Sangappa was born,” says his wife Sarojini. Sreenivas is no stranger to this family—two of their four children study at the school where he teaches.

Sarojini knows Sreenivas has come for the Census but she still hopes he can do more than that. “We do not have a decent house. My husband is a casual worker who earns only Rs 150 a day. I get Rs 25 a day if I can roll 400 beedis. When you came,I thought you would sanction money for a house,’’ says Sarojini.

“People look at the Census from their perspective. Some want to know whether they would get ration rice at the BPL rate by participating in the Census,” says Sreenivas,as he enters the house of Aithappa Naik,a labourer. Naik has never heard about the Census but is persuaded to answer the questions.

After stopping at one more house,Sreenivas walks for half an hour before reaching the spot where he had parked his motorcycle. It’s afternoon still but it’s the end of his day’s rounds.