The position of Registrar General and Census Commissioner is now held by a civil servant holding the rank of Additional Secretary.

[2] Attempts to enumerate population in parts of the Indian subcontinent and, more important, to assess landholdings for revenue purposes, existed before the British Raj and are attested in writings such as those of Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak and Muhnot Nainsi.

All of this pivoted on the fact that statistical comparison in British India relied upon a purportedly scientific classificatory system dissimilar to Indic antecedents yet similar to that of medieval Europe: focused on mutually exclusive, essence-defined, religious categories.

Aside from performing his official duties in the compilation of the subsequent report, he used the experience when writing his personal work, Caste in India, that was published in 1946.

He made almost no changes to the questions that had been asked of respondents previously but was persuaded to introduce a system whereby each person received their own form for completion.

It was thought that this approach would save time and money, as well as reduce the extent of problems caused by errors, undercounts and inconsistencies.

Those standards made it unfeasible to permit self-enumeration by the respondents but the costs and time involved in training enumerators to act on their behalf had not been offset against the perceived benefits of adopting the sampling method.

"[13] The importance of large quantities of detailed and varied demographic data increased as India moved towards adoption of five-year development plans.