Correct census needed for Nagaland’s development

‘Census’ is a union subject and it is organized under the authority of the census act of 1948 (central act 37). Every country and governmental, whatever be the type, desire to progress rapidly and provide for its people all the necessities besides to improve the quality of the living standards. Towards achieving material prosperity, planned economic development has come to be recognized by every nation as an essential step for the preparation of economic plan reliable statistics. Population census has come to be recognized as the basic source of statistic for a large variety of economic aspects like growth and distribution of population, man-power potential, employment in the different sectors, urbanization, occupational trends and industrial structure of the employed, literacy, migration, fertility, family size, housing and urbanization amenities, economic aspects of the weaker section of the community like scheduled caste and scheduled tribes. More schools and colleges are required to improve education opportunities and to eradicate illiteracy. The number of such educational institutions and their location will have to be decided based on children of school going age and students seeking college admission. New industrial units are set up taking into account not only availability of raw materials and other infrastructural facilities, but also the availability of skilled and unskilled labour force in a locality, provision of new hospitals, dispensary facilities and also the laying of roads/ railways and other communication facilities like post and telegraph offices, water supply and sanitary service etc. In short, every conceivable welfare scheme is finalized only after considering the population benefited by such scheme. Both in the planning for production and marketing and the distribution of goods and services, industrial and commercial programme is undertaken making use of census data. Census data are indispensable for market research and for a number of other sample studies undertaken by research scholar and institutional census provides a sample frame.
The utility of a periodical population enumeration is very much recognized and appreciated now and practically every civilized nation of the world conducts census operation at fixed intervals, mostly of decade. In census, a lot of information is gathered through a series of questions pertaining to vital information like age, marital status, religion, literacy, mother tongue, economic activity, fertility, migration etc. A census schedule or questionnaire containing a number of questions is used for this purpose. All efforts are taken to ensure that no individual is omitted in the enumeration at the appointed period and none is counted twice. The census thus is a photographic view of the population at a fixed point of time. The census schedules are processed carefully and the required tables are generated after which the results are published in the form of reports and tables. The scope of census has considerably widened in the modern era and there is an increasing thirst for collection of additional information of individual and household through census from time to time. Census is now a carefully organized scientific enquiry, providing the basic tools for governmental administration.
In our state, one and all must praise our chief minister Neiphiu Rio because till now, he is the only political leader who is raising his voice strongly emphasizing on the importance of census. Unlike the selfish nature of many political leaders, Rio is very much concerned about the development of the state in various spheres. It takes only a dynamic and a real leader like him to understand that the social and the economic scenario that we now have is all because of a faulty census which is the result of the dishonesty of the people. He is truly worthy of applaud and our state needs a more of Rios in order to attain a ‘developed Nagaland’.