Every ten years, India attempts something extraordinary: counting itself. On Sunday, 27 September 2026, Union Textiles Minister Giriraj Singh joined the national chorus urging every Indian household to participate in the Census of India — and to do so through the self-enumeration facility, filling in their own family's details without waiting for a field enumerator to knock on the door.

Posting in Hindi on X, the minister wrote: 'Do make sure to ensure your participation in the census. Take advantage of the self-enumeration facility and record your own and your family's information yourself. This small effort of yours will become the cornerstone of an accurate picture of the country and a better future.' The post was tagged with #MannKiBaat and #जनगणना, linking the appeal to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's monthly radio address — a platform routinely used to amplify civic participation drives.

Why this Census matters more than most

The last complete Census of India was conducted in 2011 — making it, by 2026, a fifteen-year-old snapshot of a nation that has changed beyond recognition. Population shifts, urbanisation, migration, and the expansion of digital infrastructure have all reshaped the country since that count. Every welfare scheme — from subsidised grain to women's health benefits — is still calibrated to data that predates a whole generation of policy decisions.

The stakes are enormous. Census figures directly determine parliamentary delimitation, the distribution of central funds across states, and the targeting of flagship welfare programmes. An undercounted household is an invisible household — one that slips through the net of the state entirely.

Self-enumeration: the push to modernise India's count

The self-enumeration option Singh highlighted represents a significant modernisation of how India gathers this data. Rather than relying entirely on field enumerators visiting each home, a digital self-enumeration pathway — where citizens log their own household's details — can dramatically improve accuracy, reduce costs, and reach households that enumerators might otherwise miss or miscount.

Ministers across portfolios have been amplifying census awareness on social media, a coordinated effort to lift participation rates ahead of what would be one of the most consequential data exercises in the country's post-independence history. Singh's post, riding the Mann Ki Baat wave, carries that broader mobilisation forward.

A census is only as good as the people who fill it in. Every blank form is a gap in the national record — and gaps have a cost that falls hardest on those least able to absorb it.