India’s census: Michele Bachmann’s worst nightmare

Some fringier elements of the American right have lately come to the conclusion that the whopping ten questions on this year’s U.S. census constitute some sort of flagrant and sinister invasion of privacy. I can only image what Michele Bachmann, Glenn Beck and co. would make of India’s planned "biometric census," which kicked off yesterday: 

India is launching a new census in which every person aged over 15 will be photographed and fingerprinted to create a biometric national database.

The government will then use the information to issue identity cards.

Officials will spend a year classifying India’s population of around 1.2 billion people according to gender, religion, occupation and education.

India’s interior minister says the census will be the largest in history. 

Kidding aside, this kind of census does seem a bit invasive to me and it will be interesting to see how much of a fuss Indian civil liberties groups raise over it. Surely there’s some middle ground between the Indian approach and the very minimal amount of information the U.S. government collects on its citizens. 

Hat tip: Chris Blattman