Make Caste Count

In the year 2022 comes the sixteenth edition of the largest administrative and statistical exercise in the world: The 2021 Census of India. (Yup, you read that right: the enumeration was supposed to take place in 2021, but the pandemic threw a wrench in the works, postponing it by a year. We’re still calling it the 2021 Census, though!) Like multiple past Indian censuses, this survey is preceded by widespread demand for a caste census to be conducted as part of it. But what exactly would a caste census entail? Has one ever been conducted before? Wouldn’t a caste census threaten the possibility of a caste-blind society? Why, then, should we conduct one today?

Let’s begin by travelling back in time to the British Raj, when Census Commissioner W.C. Plowden conducted India’s first synchronous, nearly nationwide census in 1881. This census consisted of questions regarding everything from the mother tongue to marital status of an individual. Additionally, Hindus were asked to disclose their caste, and people of other religions, their sect. Data on caste was included in every following enumeration until 1941, when this information was gathered but not published. M.W.M Yeats, the then Census Commissioner, cited the impracticality of drawing up a graph of every caste in the country.

Even in subsequent surveys, the only caste-based classification was of Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs), the socioeconomically disadvantaged groups listed in Articles 341 and 342 of the Indian Constitution. Since independence, these backward classes have been granted reservation status, which guarantees them representation in higher education institutes, jobs and even our legislative bodies.

But SCs and STs aren’t the only backward classes in need of affirmative action! In 1980, the Mandal Commission, established by the Janata Party government to “identify the socially or educationally backward classes,” reported another oppressed class of society: Other Backward Classes, or OBCs, identified using eleven social, economic, and educational indicators that determined backwardness. The Commission estimated that OBCs comprised 52% of the nation’s population. It went on to recommend that they be granted reservation in 27% of jobs in the public sector, a demand which the government soon met for all OBCs with the exception of the “creamy layer” (OBCs who are financially secure enough to no longer require reservation).

While this was a significant stride towards equality, there was one remaining problem. The Mandal Commission’s estimate of 52% was just that: an estimate. After all, the last set of raw data that the Commission had to go by was from 1931, with no information on caste having been collected since. Many believed that the number of OBCs in the nation was far higher, which would render the new reservation system pointless.

Finally, in 2011, the central government orchestrated the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC). This census inquired into a person’s caste and monetary status to evaluate which castes were already thriving economically and which required assistance to grow. The intelligence it gained would have been the ideal tool to identify beneficiaries of state support… if it had been published. But the central government didn’t share the results of the SECC under the defence that the data was “fraught with mistakes and inaccuracies”. A government official further stated in 2020 that the SECC’s calculations would “be futile with us being on the verge of the next Census”.

Will the 2021 Census of India bridge this gap in information, then? Likely not, as the centre has already rejected the Maharashtra state government’s writ petition requesting an enumeration of the Backward Class of Citizens in the 2021 Census. The centre also refused Maharashtra’s plea for the SECC’s raw data to be disclosed. In an affidavit, it reiterated its stance that the SECC data was too flawed to be of use and that conducting a caste census across India was unfeasible.

Despite the alleged impossibility of carrying out a complete and accurate caste census of India, is it worth at least an attempt? Why do we need a caste census? As Satish Deshpande (author and Professor of Sociology at Delhi School of Economics) so eloquently put it in his essay on the importance of a caste census, “today, power is information, not the other way around; and the absence of information, too, is an effect of power.”

Information on the caste and corresponding socioeconomic status of every citizen of the country would empower us to reform the reservation system and other compensation schemes so that affirmative action could reach those who truly need it. It would also enable us to weed out any economically secure lower castes taking unfair advantage of the reservation system. While the reservation for SCs and STs is proportionate to their actual population, the OBCs’ 27% quota is based on a mere approximation. Can we really allow such a far-reaching system to hinge on conjecture? Even those against reservation should welcome the caste census as means to measure when centuries of caste discrimination will finally be counterbalanced so affirmative action can end.

Assertions that a caste census would contradict our forefathers’ vision of a casteless India, too, are easily disproved: a caste census would only force us to acknowledge the oppression of lower castes. We could then make amends by treating people of lower castes not equally to, but better than, those of upper castes. It is through equity, not equality, that we can even the playing field for people of all castes. It is through a caste census today that we can someday fulfil our dream of a casteless society.