Creating Long Panels Using Census Data (1961–2001)

The Indian federal structure consists of states, which have elected governments, and centrally administered union territories. Early changes in state boundaries after independence aimed at creating coherent linguistic and cultural units within a federal structure. More recent changes have resulted from a combination of identity-based mass movements within existing states and political responses to them at strategic stages during electoral cycles. District changes occurred initially to absorb the many princely states and, later, as a means to expand the government as populations grew. Many excellent accounts of these changes are available (Chandra 2007; Tillin 2013).

Since official data is mostly published at the state and the district levels, multi-year analyses are made difficult by the changes in the state and district boundaries. Between 1961 and 2001, the number of states and union territories in India increased from 26 to 35, and the number of districts increased from 339 to 593. There were changes in both names and boundaries. We document these changes and use them to construct regions of amalgamated districts with constant boundaries. There are 232 such regions that can be traced from 1961 to 2001. These can form the basis of multi-year panels of Indian district data.