Consultative meeting on strategy for data dissemination :

Census organisation hosted a consultative meeting on 16 December 2001 to deliberate upon the strategy of data dissemination among the commercial and business users. The meeting was attended by organizations such as ORG-MARG, Indian Market Research Bureau (IMRB) (both well known market research groups), SAS (the software company), TERI (analyst), ESPNSTAR (the sports channel) and others. Though a limited number of participants attended this new initiative the consultation was productive and brought out the stakeholders requirement of customised data in the fields of their operation.

Outlining the objectives the Census Commissioner told the gathering that the Census organisation is alive to the varied requirement of census data by business and commercial organizations in India especially in view of the role the market research plays in the success of product or any business venture. He also emphasised the need to undertake a rapid survey across the country to understand and meet the requirement of census data in a more meaningful way. The participants welcomed this new and timely initiative taken by Census and agreed that the survey would be a right step in deciding the new data dissemination strategy. There was suggestion to prepare and maintain databases of stakeholders in different business and commercial areas of activity for more focussed interaction. Demand for supplying record level data collected by Census was also raised. Similar consultative meetings are being organised at different state capitals by the local Census Directorates.

Release of Housing Data based on 2001 Census :

The first set of Housing Tables based on the 2001 Census is likely to be made available in June 2002. The tables are to be generated on the basis of information collected at the time of Houselisting Operations in 2000. The data will cover such aspects as housing condition in both rural and urban areas in the country, availability of basic facilities as drinking water, source of lighting, fuel used for cooking, etc. For the first time data will be released on the number of households owning different amenities like radio/transistor, bicycle, car, telephone, television etc.
      Questions - Houselisting Operations

Mega Cities :

United Nations defined Mega City in 1970 as an urban agglomeration with a population of 8 million or more. In 1990 it raised the population threshold of mega cities to 10 million. Table 1 gives the tweny largest urban agglomerations in the world in terms of its population as estimated by United Nations for the year 2000. The population of urban agglomerations of India in this Table are provisional population as per Census 2001. Tokyo with an estimated population of 26.4 million holds the first position followed by Greater Mumbai (18.7 million) and Mexico City (18.1 million). It would be interesting to note that although the level of urbanization in India is among the lowest in the world, as many as three urban agglomerations figure in the top twenty urban agglomerations in the world.

Provisional Results on Rural Urban Distribution of Population for each State/Union territory has been released at district and tahsil/taluka level. Whereas the District level data are available on the Internet at the Census of India website, the Tahsil/taluka level data are available only in printed publications.