India starts census of more than a billion people

India kicked off the national census of its billion-plus population today with a 2.5 million-strong army of census-takers fanning out across the country to conduct what has been billed the world’s largest administrative exercise.

The census, conducted every 10 years, has a new element this year with the collection of biometric data in which every citizen over the age of 15 will be photographed and fingerprinted, information that will form the base of a new National Population Register of the country’s 1.2 billion population.