Hoping for the final countdown

Hoping for the final countdown
EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE

MUMBAI , FEB 13: Anant Surve has been looking for Angad Jaiswal for the past four days. Today's visit is the fourth one in a row, but his kholi in Eksar dongri, Borivali (W), is always locked, mornings, afternoons or evening. Jaiswal's neighbours say he usually comes home after 10 pm. Surve is not very happy to hear this. He lives in Ghatkopar and the prospect of a midnight rendezvous with Jaiswal for census duty is not one bit appealing.

Enumerator Srikant Jadhav has been doing the rounds of the upwardly mobile in Borivali for Census 2001. Things have gone smoothly today, but some of the residents can be uncooperative. Some refuse to open the door, insisting on communicating the demographic details through three inches of wood. A next to impossible feat for Jadhav since the census sheets are almost as big as that of a newspaper and he needs proper support to write on them.

Also, residents do not take to kindly to their afternoon siesta being disturbed for seemingly inconsequential details. Despite feeling like a detergent salesman, Jadhav persists. His aim is to finish off the almost 225 houses in his block and enjoy the remaining days off from work.

In the pre-census training they received, the questions were explained clearly to the enumerators. Then there were rounds of mock interviews and finally the trainers pretended to be the residents, throwing all sorts of difficult situations at the enumerators. They had been warned to cooperate with the residents and adhere to the rules.

Easier said than done. Surve and Jadhav represent the typical experience of an enumerator in Mumbai. While the people living in the slums are more than ready to copperate, often language is a big problem. Some of the families from Andhra Pradesh don't even speak Hindi. The entire process that usually takes 30 minutes stretches to an hour what with Surve questioning in Marathi and the interpreter first using a Telugu dialect and then Marathi. Any hope of completing at least 15 households in a day goes down the drain.

Another problem is ascertaining who is living with whom and how they are related to each other. As Surve found out the hard way with Lakshmi. The 23-year old gave information about her parents and her brother living next door. Surve duly filled two forms, before realising that Lakshmi herself did not reside with them. She was merely visiting.

Then there was the case of Dulari Devi. When word spread in the slum that geenti ke liye aadmi aaya hei (the enumerator has come)

she hurried towards him, toddlers in tow. Once she found Surve she urged him to take her geenti as well. ``But her house number was not on my list. After all I'm not the only enumerator in this slum. There are three others. But Dulari Devi thought I was ignoring her and her children's existence,'' recalled Surve, not comfortable in this largely Hindi-speaking slum.

``At least the houses in the slums have been numbered,'' says an annoyed Jadhav. ``There are so many houses that seem to exist only on my list. I haven't seen the numbers around the doors. I will have to check with my supervisor.'' While Jadhav does not run into language problems, the husband-wife working set-up is full of hassles for him because there are no adults in the house to answer his questions. Enumerators are not allowed to get information through the telephone but some admit they have done it a couple of times.

Census data will be collected across the country between February 9 and 22. If during this entire period, a resident of Mumbai is in Delhi, he or she will be counted as a Delhite. The 22nd question on the form, pertaining to the place of last residence does not specify wheter it is talking about permanent or temporary residence. Watch out die-hard Bombayites, you just might be counted as Dilliwallas.