Lies, damn lies & statistics: In India, when a census taker asks questions, he already knows the answers.
McGowan, Jo
OF SEVERAL HINDS JO McGOWAH LIES, DAMN LIES & STATISTICS How India's census takers count India's census, a once-adecade undertaking, is a massive, door-to-door exercise because...
...It was clear, however, that I was getting nowhere by arguing...
...He asked me what my husband did and wrote down my answer carefully...
...It took another five minutes to convince him...
...As it happened, one of them was from Calcutta and spoke Bengali as her mother tongue, another was from Kerala and spoke Malyalam, while the other two were British and spoke English...
...Like many other organizations around the country, my school, located in the North Indian city of Dehra Doon, waged an intensive awareness campaign in the weeks leading up to the census to encourage people with disabilities to see this as an opportunity finally to be counted...
...He argued with me a bit more, delivering a short lecture on the importance of a Hindu wife respecting her husband, but finally marked me down as a Christian...
...Hindi is his mother tongue, Punjabi can be his second language...
...It's all very well to believe—even fervently— in your own, but to let that lead you to the childlike certainty that everyone you meet agrees with you may be carrying things a bit too far...
...His mother tongue isn't Hindi...
...I'm the director of a school...
...Wait a minute," I protested...
...Wait a minute," I said...
...If this were my experience, and I was educated and aware of the importance of the census, what would be the experience of citizens less confident or more intent on hiding things...
...Now language," he said, writing down Hindi as my husband's mother tongue...
...Conducted in February by enumerators culled from government schools, it was especially interesting to me because, after enormous effort, disability activists such as myself (I head a school for children with special needs) had succeeded in persuading the government to include handicapped people for the first time...
...After putting down my husband Ravi's name as "Head of the Household" (I didn't even try to argue with him), the enumerator listed my name and those of our three children...
...a child like my daughter, who falls into three of the given categories, had to be slotted into the one which we believed disabled her the most), those of us in the rehabilitation field thought it was better than nothing...
...We hoped the census would eventually force the government to allocate funds more equitably...
...Focused as I was purely on the disability issue, it somehow never struck me that there were many other issues being addressed in the census, each with its own set of difficulties...
...Hang on," I said...
...I had given my husband's name, thinking to avoid unnecessary explanations...
...I can tell by your name," he said pityingly...
...Commonweal 9 August 17,2001...
...While the census question was unsatisfactorily framed (only one disability was allowed per person...
...How is that possible...
...India has more than twenty officially recognized languages, and while no one has yet come up with a way to resolve the problems that inevitably result from that, it's fairly certain that pretending there is only one is not it...
...I'm a Christian...
...No," said the enumerator emphatically...
...OF SEVERAL HINDS JO McGOWAH LIES, DAMN LIES & STATISTICS How India's census takers count India's census, a once-adecade undertaking, is a massive, door-to-door exercise because widespread illiteracy makes a mail-in form impractical...
...Do you know what a mother tongue is...
...The whole exercise had revealed itself as a farce, and I felt a bit of a fool to have ever believed any usable statistics were to be obtained from it...
...It took me another five minutes to persuade him that the children, including my son, were also Christian, and it was clear the enumerator was not at all happy about it...
...With such a multilingual group to contend with, the census man began to look a little less confident, but he remained still unconvinced...
...he said blankly...
...It makes for a funny story, and most of my friends were highly amused when I told them about it...
...For the next question, "Religion," without asking, he filled in "Hindu" for Ravi and was about to do the same for me and for the children...
...Not possible," he said, clearly offended...
...we all speak Hindi...
...In tiny letters, he penciled in the answers I had given him, but I was quite sure they would be erased as soon as he left and be replaced with his more "accurate" ones...
...I excused myself and went to the garden to answer his questions...
...it's his mother tongue," I said just as emphatically...
...We certainly do not all speak Hindi," I said, struggling between amusement and anger, "and while it's very flattering of you to say that mine is so good that it could be considered my mother tongue, anyone with ears can tell that it isn't...
...But Punjabi is not his second language...
...And religion...
...Your name is Chopra...
...The day the census enumerator came to my home, my school colleagues and I were having a meeting in my living room...
...By the time we finally got to the question I had been so eager to answer, the one about a family member with a disCommonweal 8 August 17,2001 ability, I was past caring what the man wrote...
...I'm a Christian...
...It's Punjabi...
...The next question regarded employment...
...Well, you're wrong," I said...
...By now, totally ignoring me, he recorded Hindi as my mother tongue, as well as that of the children...
...But the more I think about it, the harder it is to laugh...
...We are all Indians...
...How do you know what my religion is...
...Look, I know what my religion is...
...I went inside and asked my colleagues to come out and join me...
...If only life really were as simple as my enumerator imagines it to be...
...Then he began to fill in the blank for me as "housewife...
Vol. 128 • August 2001 • No. 14
