Arrivals Gather Momentum

ration check was superior to that3 for the 1951 check. Yet the results are in some cases quite surprising. For about one-fourth of the persons in the households, both in rural and urban areas of India, which were re-enumerated, it is not known whether they were "missed" or "over counted" in the Census. In rural Jammu and Kashmir, not a single female was missed; and the three figures of over-counted males as well as females and missed males are all the same (1256).7 The chief bottleneck seems to be the difficulty of securing independent and accurate field-work. Can we not, therefore, explore the possibility of undertaking a smaller post-enumeration check in collaboration with the various institutions undertaking demographic research and training? Of course, the approach in such collaborative projects must be entirely scientific. The aim should be to know how far the census omits or over-counts people and to which sex-age-marital status and worker groups such persons belong. If this idea is found acceptable, one would also venture to suggest that we extend the 1971 post-enumeration check to include a check on the contents of the census schedules or the reliability of the responses to the census enumerators.