Why Counting Caste Matters

Context: Debate around whether the decennial Census should collect data on caste from individuals who fall into administrative categories of ‘General’ and ‘Other Backward Classes’ (OBCs) has been argued by public intellectuals, politicians, and government administrators for decades.

Concerns related to caste census

• Methodological and logistical challenges in caste count:  Such as administrative difficulties and cumbersome processes that can jeopardise whole exercise, and compromise basic integrity of Census.
• Full-caste count will further entrench caste identities: As caste census will require all households to think about, acknowledge, and speak about caste identities.
• Scope for misuse of caste data:
  • Private groups with access to money and power can regularly collect caste data for their needs.
  • Political parties can map caste and religious composition of neighborhoods, cities, and villages to mobilize voters.
• Resource mis-allocation: Collection of caste data is considered a misuse of public resources by some group.

Importance of caste census

• To understand the full scope of caste disadvantage: As caste elites believe that caste no longer matters in shaping opportunities and outcomes in 21st century.
  • This caste blindness, or caste lessness, obscures caste privileges and conceals sources of multi-generational structural advantage.
• Examine the full scope of privilege and advantage: Perspective of casteless-ness ignores relational nature of caste i.e. the same societal institutions, systems, and cultural norms that have led to historic and ongoing subjugation of oppressed castes have simultaneously empowered others.
• Help in understanding contours of inequality and develop justice-oriented policies: Caste data are crucial to understanding how caste intersects with class, gender, and regionality to structure access to resources.
• Policy gap: Census currently only collects data on ‘Scheduled Castes’ (SCs) and ‘Scheduled Tribes’ (STs), it fails to provide comprehensive data on India’s graded caste hierarchy.
• Scope for misuses: Absence of detailed caste data leads to-
  • Failure to name and confront major structural and foundational problems of society.
  • Space for opportunistic politicians to exploit each caste.
  • Miss the opportunity to craft reasoned, data-driven, and inclusive public policies.
• Towards equal representation in jobs: Caste elites have a numerical and cultural stranglehold over upper bureaucracy, despite more than 70 years of Central government reservations.
  • In 2019, out of 82 Secretaries to Government of India, only four were SCs or STs.
  • Among 457 serving secretaries, joint secretaries, and additional secretaries, merely 12% were SCs and OBCs.
  • Group 1/A of Central Civil Services (i.e., top tier of bureaucracy) has still not fulfilled its reservation quotas for SCs and OBCs.
• International conduct: Census bureaus in the U.S., Brazil, and South Africa, as well as in other countries with long histories of white supremacy, collect detailed data on race and class.

Way forward

• Collected caste data should be publicly available for use continuing the existing practice of the Office of the Registrar General of India to make Census data publicly available.
  • Census has legal standing, public trust, operational expertise, and resources to collect, analyse, and make public caste data.
• Caste data must be collected as part of this constitutionally required exercise: Having caste Census as part of another state project, or overseen by nodal agencies other than the ORGI, will relegate it to parts of bureaucracy with insufficient expertise in a nationwide data collection operation.
• Use of experienced demographers in government agencies and universities to tackle methodological and logistical challenges. Eg. India Human Development Survey have collected caste-wise data.
• Careful planning to prevent groups from being made invisible in data, such as Dalit Muslims, Dalit Christians, inter-caste and inter-religious households and LGBTQ+ individuals.
• Provision of external oversight: To make data usable and to minimise potential harm.
  • Public oversight group should ensure that major operational and methodological decisions align with data collection’s purpose.