World’s largest Census in 2021 would be conducted in India will using digital technology as announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday, 1 February. The FM in her union budget speech stated that the upcoming Census 2021 will be the first “digital census” in the history of India and that the government has allocated over ₹3,700 crores for the same.

The FM said, “The forthcoming census could be the first digital census in the history of India. For this monumental, milestone-marking task, I have allocated ₹3,768 crore in the year 2021-22″.

Notably, Home Minister Amit Shah had  made an announcement regarding this in 2019.

“Census data will be collected through a mobile app. This is for the first time that the mobile app will be used for the census exercise. India will be moving from the pen and paper census to digital data, which will be a big revolution in the country’s census exercise,” Shah had said according to an Economic Times report.

This will mean a boost in business for both hardware companies, which will likely see a surge in sales of laptops, tablets, smartphones and printers, as well as software companies that will run and build the technology-enabled backend.

The Budget also launched a National Indian Language Mission with the idea of extending the “wealth of governance” in major Indian languages. “Setting up of Natural Language Translation Mission will help India strengthen its power as a global #digital hub. Keen to learn more about the initiative from the government,” the IT industry body said on Twitter.

Rakesh Deshmukh, co-founder and chief executive officer of Indus OS, said that the announcement of the National Language Translation Mission is a much-needed effort by the government to reach our citizens in the language they understand.

“At Indus App Bazaar, the usage of apps in Indian languages on our platform has increased 2.2 times last year. We believe that with an enhanced app store ecosystem, we will be able to break linguistic barriers and add more value to the next half a billion Indian customers.” he said.

This will also give a major boost to big ticket Indian IT firms like TCS, Infosys etc. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that the government will use data analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning to launch MCA 21 3.0 which will add the facility of e-scrutiny, e-consultation, compliance management, and e-adjudication among others.

News Source: The Commune Magazine dated 1.02.2021, IT Firms Budget 2021: Indian IT firms set to gain from Digital Census 2021, MCA 21 3.0 (indiatimes.com)

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