New Delhi, Jan. 9 -- On Wednesday, the same day that the National Statistics Office published its first advance estimate of GDP for 2025-26, the government announced that India's long-overdue census will kick off on 1 April 2026.

The coincidence is apt, even if unintended. If economic growth is about prosperity, the census is about people. And since the aim of any democracy is to ensure that prosperity reaches all its people, we need to know more about the latter.

It's here that Census 2027 is expected to play a vital role.

For starters, though our population has overtaken China's, according to Worldometer, a website that offers real-time statistics, our headcount is likely to conclusively show that India is now the world's most populo...