Socioeconomic and Caste Census(SECC) 2011: Salient Findings

Socioeconomic and Caste Census(SECC) 2011: Salient Findings

Question: The first Socioeconomic and Caste Census since 1934 has been released recently. According to recently released SECC 2011, around 19% of the rural population in India lacked one of 7 socioeconomic parameters to estimated deprivation that include quality housing, source of income and literacy among adults. Highlight the main findings of this census.

- Around 19% of the rural population of India lacks 1 of 7 socioeconomic parameters for estimating deprivation that include source of income, presence of literate adults and top class dwelling

- This is the first SECC in India since the 1930s

- The census found that around 30% of rural households are landless and derive a chunk of their income from manual, casual labour

- Second most form of deprivation was literacy with close to a quarter or 23.5% of rural households have no literate adults above the age of 25

- Census shows 1 in 3 rural households are landless and are reliant on manual labour for livelihood

- 10.69 crore were deprived households while 90.3% of the members were without salaried jobs

- 18.7% of the total population surveyed were deprived on at least one socioeconomic parameter and 56% were landless households

- This census will provide support for target groups and policy planning

- Extent of and approach to deprivation captured by the SECC 2011 contrasts with poverty estimates of the Planning Commission which was income based

- As per the Commission’s estimate in 2011-2012, 25.7% of the rural population of India fell below the poverty line with income below INR 816 per capita per month

- Poverty estimates of the Planning Commission and the SECC were not considered comparable

- The census found less than 5% of rural households paid income tax

- Even among rich states such as TN, Maharashtra and Kerala, the number was centred around the 5% mark

- Nearly 75% of rural households have the main earning family member has made less than INR 5000 per month or around INR 60,000 each year

- The main earning member makes more than INR 10,000 every month in just 8% of the households

- Rural eastern parts of India are worse off, while rural north is more comfortably off financially

- Around 20% of rural households own a vehicle and around 11 percent have a fridge and 72% own a phone of some kind

- Extremely low income numbers follow from the nature of employment followed by most rural Indian households

- Around 30% of the rural households derive their income from cultivation

- Numbers also indicate the subsistence level of farming rural India presently follows

- Around half of rural India owns no land and among households who own the land, around 40% is not irrigated

- Close to 4% own mechanised agricultural equipment and around 10% own any irrigation equipment

- Lower than 4% have an agricultural credit card entitling them to INR 50,000 per month

- Fewer than 10% of the households make it to higher secondary or above and around 3.41% of households have a family member reaching graduate level

- Around 35.73% of the households are illiterate while around 13.97% are literates below primary level

- Primary school education was the level of education completed by 17.78% of the households surveyed while 13.53% were educated till middle school.

- Secondary education was completed by around 9.57% of the households while 5.41% were HSC students and around 3.45% were graduates or higher

- Fewer than 5% of SC and ST households had a main earner who made more than INR 10,000 each month while there were twice as many households for other category

- Among ST, around 86.57% were earning less than INR 5000 while 8.90% earned between INR 5000 and 10000 while 4.48% earned more than INR 10,000

- Regarding SCs, 83.56% were earning less than INR 5000 while 11.72% earned between INR 5000 to 10,000 and 4.69% earned higher than this

- Of the General category households, 70.24% were earning less than INR 5000 and 19.90% earned around INR 5000 to 10,000 while 9.82% earned more

- Rural regions of north India were more prosperous than the south while its east and central regions were ones which performed worst on the SECC indicators

- Landlessness and reliance on manual labour contributes the most to deprivation

- Half of rural India is deprived on at least one SES indicator

Facts and Stats

- SECC 2011 is a paperless census making it one of the kind

- Enumeration of this data was done using 6.4 lakh electronic handheld devices

- Around 640 districts were covered by the census

- A total of 24.39 crore households were surveyed as per this census

- Around 17.91 crore households belonged to the rural segment

- Household data was obtained from the National Population Register along with a TIN or Temporary Identification Number

- Total of 1.24 crore claims and objections were received of which 99.7% were resolved

- Census provides information about various aspects of the SES such as housing, landlessness, educational status, status of women, differently abled, SC/ST households, incomes etc

- SECC provided for automatic exclusion on basis of 14 parameters while automatic inclusion was on basis of 5 parameters and grading of deprivation was on the basis of 7 criteria

- Data addressed the multi dimensionality of poverty and provided for evidence based planning with gram panchayat units