Both this and next year is going to be highly crucial for the country in respect of preparation and publication of Census 2021 and fine tuning of administrative machineries is going all over the states including Arunachal Pradesh. Importance and need of a census is unquestionable since without inputs of population figures, nationally or for that matter any state, district or lower denominations, formulation of any developmental activity will be practically impossible. But even if preparations for this mammoth exercise is in full swing, some disturbing developments have taken place reportedly from Panaji, Goa where protesters against the citizenship grid comprising the CAA-NPR-NRC on Friday last took pledge not to furnish any information whatsoever for the purposes of NPR or even for the upcoming Census until all the above three are fully withdrawn officially. This is really alarming which also shows how the ‘ghost’ of citizenship is chasing common people and if  Census 2021 turns out to be the ‘punching bag’ for all these accumulated anger, frustration and sense of insecurity which the trio, as is the growing public perception, had delivered, it will be terribly unfortunate indeed. The exercise itself is a huge one in all respects requiring utmost diligence and administrative competence and any unwanted disturbance will only hamper quality of data bringing far-rooted negative consequences over and across various fronts, especially all developmental undertakings which rely heavily upon population related data, throughout the coming decade and beyond.  
No elaborate explanation will be required to convey the importance of the decadal census and also that it has absolutely nothing to do with any or all of the components of the just enacted citizenship law (CAA) or the programmes (NPR/NRC) that are or even not in the offing, at least for time being. This is a simple yet technical clarification that hasn’t been propagated elaborately on a mass scale as a sensitisation instrument to ward off the gathering confusion and mistrust, and all time and energy had seemingly been spent on explaining the ‘harmlessness’ and ‘constitutional coherence’ of CAA. But previously, all census operations had never faced such a queer situation and it used to be a festive atmosphere for all citizens marked with an eager wait when the enumerators would knock doors to have the name included in national population figure- another great way of basking in the feeling of a proud Indian, very similar to the one experienced while exercising an adult franchise.  
Given the unprecedented happening(s), central and all state governments must act fast to erase the misconceptions by undertaking a massive trust-building exercise and do all that is required to delink the sacred Census 2021 from the great citizenship debacle. 

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Kenter Joya Riba

(Managing Editor)
      She is a graduate in Science with post graduation in Sociology from University of Pune. She has been in the media industry for nearly a decade. Before turning to print business, she has been associated with radio and television.
Email: kenterjoyaz@easternsentinel.in / editoreasternsentinel@gmail.com
Phone: 0360-2212313

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