Pages put up on Facebook , celebrities roped in to create awareness

From February 9, the big brother will come looking for you. Don’t sweat though, as it will be for the 2011 census. This time around, the government fully intends to leverage the reach of social networking media to make the 2011 census a success. It’s altogether a different matter that most Indian homes do not have access to the Internet, but like the official census website says, every “drop of water contributes to the mighty ocean”. The Madhya Pradesh government and the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) held a day-long workshop on the role of media in Census 2011 to this effect in Bhopal. It was announced at the venue that two pages on census related information has been uploaded on Facebook. The second phase of Census 2011 starts on February 9 across India and concludes on February 28.

Sachin Sinha, director of the directorate for census work talked about the celebrity endorsements – “While the centre’s brand ambassadors are Sachin Tendulkar and actress Priyanka Chopra, lyricist Gulzar and television actress Divyanka Tripathi would be the brand ambassadors for census work in Madhya Pradesh.” Voicing his concerns about the class struggle prevalent here he remarked, “It is a real challenge for us to include everyone – from beggars to the elite class – in the census.” Either that or he meant to underscore the economic disparity of our nation; neither of which makes much sense.