Delays in the release of India's census data.

The timeliness dimension of data quality has not received sufficient scholarly attention even though the publication of official statistics of various countries are often delayed. This paper examines the growing delays in the release of census data in India amidst the technocratisation of policy-making, public professions of faith in evidence based policy-making and growing fascination with big data. We show that the growing delay in the release of census data of India is a fact, rather than a mere allegation, and contextualise the problem by comparing seven decennial censuses conducted between 1951 and 2011. We suggest that delays can be measured vis-à-vis usual, desirable, declared and feasible schedules of publication. Further, delays can be understood from the perspectives of the unwillingness of the government statistical system to face public scrutiny, decline in the quality of public goods, political interference and, in case of data on identity, communalisation of politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]