Count The Ladder’s Rung

Context: ‘Caste Census’ will help to cope up with the marginalised and minority group.

Importance of Caste-census

• Fill information gap: To bring out unseen aspects of various caste groups and their share in resources.
• Policy tool to address poverty and inequality: As the absolute poverty has increased manifold, the inequality between castes and classes is widening day by day.
• Inclusive Development: Caste-Census help to assemble the exact population of various caste groups and to assess the so-called inclusive development since independence.
• Empowering vulnerable sections like landless rural people: Caste-census will figure out them, and deal with their dire situation by developing sensitive and inclusive intervention plans.

Challenges in Caste-census

• Leads to ‘Casteism’: The demand for making caste census public may lead to casteism in every sphere.
• Stonewall collective demand: Caste-census may stonewall the collective demand, neglecting individual and other aspects of vulnerabilities.
• Politicisation: As granular data will allow parties to make targeted policy-making.
• Regressive intend: As it may contribute towards strengthening of caste identitites.

Conclusion: Despite many challenges, caste census could be an effective policy tool for empowering marginal sections of society is rightly explored.