What is SECC 2011?

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Minister Rural Development, Panchayati Raj and Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation, Chaudhary Birendra Singh, on July 3 jointly released on-line the provisional data from the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011 for Rural India. The Report of the SECC 2011 is available on http://secc.gov.in. The survey has been completed in all the 640 districts.

It is provisional as the final lists are being uploaded in some districts after addressing all the objections received. The Ministry of Rural Development Government of India, commenced the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011, in June 2011 through a comprehensive door to door enumeration across the country.

This is the first time such a comprehensive exercise has been carried out for both rural and urban India. It is also expected to generate information on a large number of social and economic indicators relating to households across the country. It has three objectives: 1. To enable households to be ranked based on their Socio- Economic status.

State Governments can then prepare a list of families living below the poverty line; 2. To make available authentic information that will enable caste-wise population enumeration of the country; and 3. To make available authentic information regarding the socio economic condition, and education status of various castes and sections of the population SECC 2011 is a unique paperless Census.

The enumeration of the data was done using over 6.4 lakh electronic handheld device. It is being released as its use in evidence based planning for rural development and poverty reduction needs to be undertaken immediately. It provides very useful data on households regarding various aspects of their socio-economic status – housing, land-holding, landlessness, educational status, status of women, the differently able, occupation, possession of assets, SC/ST households, incomes, etc.

SECC provided for automatic exclusion on the basis of 14 parameters, automatic inclusion on the basis of 5 parameters and grading of deprivation on the basis of seven criteria. The data addresses the multi dimensionality of poverty and provides a unique opportunity for a convergent, evidence based planning with a Gram Panchayat as a unit. The data is an opportunity to make evidence based selection, prioritization and targeting of beneficiaries in different programmes.