Why India must correct its Caste Census

• The Narendra Modi government’s decision to include caste enumeration in the next Census is a transformative step towards evidence-based policymaking for a more just and inclusive India.

• The policy of caste blindness, which attempted to abolish caste while pursuing social justice, is a textbook example of policy schizophrenia.

• The Constitution mandates the pursuit of social justice through reservations in education, public employment, and electoral constituencies, which require precise, disaggregated caste data.

• Dr. B.R. Ambedkar denounced the omission of caste tables from the 1951 Census as an act of “petty intelligence.”

• The lack of caste data has rendered many of India’s marginalised communities invisible in official statistics.

• The introduction of reservations in education and public employment for the Economically Weaker Sections among upper castes (2019) has made a comprehensive enumeration of all castes a legal imperative.

• The reservation policy currently operates in an evidence vacuum, leaving it vulnerable to arbitrary demands from powerful caste groups and politically expedient decisions by governments.

• Caste enumeration is also an administrative imperative to prevent the elite capture, enable rational sub-categorisation within social groups, and allow a more precise definition of the “creamy layer.”

• The era of partial counting must end.

• The 2010 Parliament unanimously resolved to count caste in the 2011 Census, but the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) of 2011, conducted by the United Progressive Alliance-II government, was a debacle.

• To avoid repeating the SECC-2011 fiasco, the following steps must be taken:

   – Legal backing: Amend the Census Act, 1948 to explicitly mandate caste enumeration.