Why is India holding a huge census?

Does your house have a concrete roof or a thatched one?

What is your main cereal? Do you have internet access - or just a basic mobile phone? And what access do you have to a toilet?

These are some of the questions that more than a billion people in India will be asked in the world's largest census that is currently taking place in the country.

The census marks the first population count in India in more than 15 years.

Imagine putting your whole school in the playground and then counting them ALL and asking them all the same set of questions and recording their answers.

That is kind of what a census does, but for a WHOLE country.

Instead of the hundreds of people in your school, a census counts billions of people in one country.

The counting and questions allows the government to collect detailed information about households, housing, and things such as age, employment, and education to help divide and provide funding and plan public services.

India's census has to include a LOT of people - 36 states and territories, more than 7,000 sub-districts, over 9,700 towns and nearly 640,000 villages.

The work to collect the data will be carried out by people called enumerators and supervisors - typically schoolteachers, government staff and local officials.

For the first time, the census will be conducted digitally, with enumerators using mobile apps to collect and upload data as they go door to door to collect information.

According to the United Nations Population Fund, India overtook China in having the world's biggest population in 2023 when it was estimated there were more than 1.4 billion people living in the country

Although the last time India held a census was back in 2011; which means the data is outdated.

As the government use census information to decide things like where money is spent and houses are built it is very important to have up-to-date figures.

"This census is crucial - it is the definitive snapshot of India, capturing everything from caste and religion to jobs, education and amenities, and offering the most complete picture of how the population lives," says Economist Ashwini Deshpande of Ashoka University.