Published: 09:23 AM, 01 June 2026
How India plans to count 1.4 billion people
India has kicked off a mammoth exercise to count its entire population - all 1.4 billion of them, give or take a few, in a census initially delayed by the pandemic then administrative issues.
Over the next year, more than three million people will go door-to-door, traveling through megacities and remote villages, to tally up every household and resident of India - and collect data on their social and economic characteristics, reports CNN.
For the first time in almost 100 years, the survey will include caste - a controversial decision that some say could further entrench divisions.
The final count will not be known until next year, underscoring the vast scale of an exercise that seeks to capture the contours of one of the world's most diverse and complex societies.
India is meant to count its population once every decade, but this will be the first in 16 years after a delay in 2021 due to Covid-19 and other administrative setbacks.
During the last official census in 2011, India counted just over 1.2 billion people. The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs now estimates it's overtaken China to become the world's most populous nation with 1.4 billion people. Its demographics have also undergone an epochal shift. Currently, more than 40% of India's residents are under the age of 25, and UN data placed the country's estimated median age in 2023 at just 28, nearly a decade younger than China's. This represents what economists call a "demographic dividend" - the potential for accelerated economic growth resulting from a favorable shift in a population's age structure.
The census will be held in two phases and cover all of India's 26 states and federally administered territories. First, officials will gather details on the condition of households across India, the amenities in each one, and all the assets available to them.
The second phase, scheduled for February 2027, will collect data on demographics, salary, education, migration, and fertility.
Workers will travel to nearly 640,000 villages and 10,000 towns, according to a government statement.
