The debate around citizenship data fails to recognise that much of what is being politically brandished to score points is, for most parts, already happening on the ground and is unlikely to be reversed. Reason: there is too much serious welfare money being moved on the basis of this data for anyone to wreck the edifice.The National Population Register (NPR), which is under the political spotlight now, is a crucial link in this chain that has changed the way India targets its poor for welfare initiatives. To not hold or, in any way, delay the NPR exercise in 2020 will be far more politically counterproductive than the ongoing citizenship row. Just how?What’s conveniently left out in this, otherwise dogged political fight is the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC). This was conducted for the first time in 2011-12 and has now become the mainstay of all major centrally-sponsored social sector schemes — from Ujjwala to Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana and, now, Ayushman Bharat.The 2011 SECC relied on the household survey data obtained from the NPR. Now, there is an important legal complexity that needs to be understood here. The decadal Census also has household data and, perhaps, much more detail, including religion. However, it’s bound by the confidentiality clause in the Census Act that does to permit making individual or household information publicly available.The SECC, on the other hand, is a census outside the Census Act and its data can be used for targeted delivery of schemes and services. Notably, the SECC enumerators went out on the field with NPR household data on their handheld devices.This was technically enabled through a series of orders in 2011-12 by the Office of the Registrar General of India that allowed for NPR data to be used in SECC. This was even officially acknowledged in 2015 when the data was put online by the finance ministry.“SECC 2011 is a unique paperless Census. The enumeration of the data was done using over 6.4 lakh electronic handheld devices. Household data was taken from the National Population Register along with the Temporary Identification Number (TIN)… The use of the NPR TIN Number across programmes affords an opportunity to track the progress of households over the years,” read the statement.But why only the NPR? Because it was collected under the rules of the Citizenship Act and not the Census Act. Which meant, unlike Census, the NPR data could be shared to conduct the SECC. In many ways, the NPR, since it was carried out alongside the census, acted as a bridge to convey the household data that formed the basis of SECC.The SECC in itself has been quite transformative. Its evolution can be traced to the famous poverty line debate in UPA-2 between the erstwhile Planning Commission and the rural development ministry with the former pegging the number lower than 20%. Those days, the urban development ministry too had its own BPL survey for the urban poor. Separately, the home ministry was planning on caste census.All these were brought together under one census, the SECC. This census sorted the households on the basis of the seven deprivation parameters, such as one room with kutcha roof and wall, SC/ST household, female-headed household with no adult male member in the age 16 to 59, etc. In rural areas, this came to about 8.72 crore households, roughly a third of the total households in the country.While this was underway, a separate turf war had emerged in the UPA between Aadhaar and the NPR-based national identity card. This remained largely unresolved by the time the NDA took over in 2014.It was the Narendra Modi government that took the call to seed the Aadhaar data with the NPR and then set up committee under then-finance secretary Sumit Bose to evaluate ways to use the SECC data for social welfare initiatives. It was this committee that in 2016 gave the recommendation to make SECC the basis of key welfare schemes.The SECC clearly ended the BPLled approach being followed since the 1950s and provided a more flexible and digitally available data. Each scheme could decide the number of deprivation parameters it wanted to select and identify the beneficiaries, who could then be geo-tagged and digitally represented.On the other hand, the Aadhaar-linked Jan Dhan accounts allowed for direct cash transfers to the beneficiaries. Essentially, what was established was a direct connect, and this was how all centrally sponsored schemes were rolled out. BJP reaped rich political divided in the UP elections of the 2017 and then, of course, the 2019 general elections.So, what we have now is a new, more efficient way of running schemes. At this point, any notion to withhold the NPR process would only delay the updation of the SECC data, which would be politically unacceptable. After all, several state governments are also using SECC data for their own schemes as well.The SECC is the new BPL and no political party can afford to sacrifice it at the altar of citizenship, especially when real money transfers are made possible by this.Quite the same way, it would also have to be understood that just like the NPR, which has now become an essential exercise after being linked to the SECC, the NRC or any other future count too will need a well-argued welfare logic, not just nationalist sentiment. And as the Aadhaar story has shown, both can be mutually inclusive.