Explained: Demands for a caste census, and what happens now after its approval

Caste census demand

The data collected in Censuses since 1951 include the numbers of individuals belonging to the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs), and of various religious denominations. But the members of caste groups other than SCs and STs have not been counted.

The most recent caste data available is from the Census of 1931. The 1941 Census, carried out during the War, collected data on caste, but they were never released.

Ahead of the first Census of independent India, the government chose to avoid the question of caste. Thereafter, demands for a caste census were repeatedly raised, especially by parties who had a base among Other Backward Classes (OBCs), primarily farming communities and artisans.

But no Indian government ever carried out a full count of caste memberships.

From Census to SECC

In 2010, as the decadal Census approached, then Law Minister M Veerappa Moily wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asking that caste/ community data be collected during Census 2011.

The Prime Minister’s Office forwarded the request to the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, which rejected it. In May 2010, responding to demands for a caste census by parties such as the RJD, SP, DMK, and JDU, and some OBC MPs of the BJP, Home Minister P Chidambaram apprised Parliament of “a number of logistic and practical difficulties” pointed out by the RGI “in canvassing the question of caste while conducting the Census”.

Chidambaram argued that “enumeration” was different from “compilation, analysis and dissemination”. The Census is meant to collect “observational data”, for which 21 lakh enumerators, mostly primary school teachers, have been trained. “They have been trained to ask the question and record the answer as returned by the respondent. The enumerator is not an investigator or verifier,” Chidambaram said.

Under continued pressure by UPA allies, however, Singh’s government set up a Group of Ministers under then Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee to examine the issue. Based on the GoM’s recommendations, the Union Cabinet decided in September 2010 on a separate Socio Economic Caste Census (SECC).

“The caste enumeration would be conducted as a separate exercise from the month of June 2011 and completed in a phased manner by September 2011 after the Population Enumeration phase (to be conducted in February-March 2011) of the Census 2011 is over,” the government said.

This changed the game, and the political purpose of the demand for caste enumeration was defeated.

The SECC was carried out at a cost of almost Rs 4,900 crore. The data were published by the Ministries of Rural Development and Urban Development in 2016, but the caste data were excluded. The raw caste data was handed over to the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, which formed an Expert Group under then NITI Aayog Vice Chairperson Arvind Panagariya for classification and categorisation. The data are yet to be made public.

Recent developments

Ahead of the Lok Sabha election of 2024, almost every party other than the central BJP came out in support of the caste census. In Bihar, even the BJP joined the clamour. Rahul Gandhi raised the issue of unequal representation of OBCs in prime positions in the government.

The Congress improved on its position in the election, rising to 99 seats from the 52 it won in 2019. On the other hand, the BJP lost its single-party majority of 2014 and 2019, suffering a major setback in states including Uttar Pradesh.

Of late, several state governments have sought to implement “quota within quota” by subcategorising OBCs based on their own caste censuses, calling them “surveys” because the Census is technically part of the constitutional mandate of the Centre.

Earlier, on April 1, 2021, the constitutional body National Commission for Backward Classes had urged the government to collect data on the population of OBCs “as part of Census of India 2021 exercise”.

However, on July 20, 2021, the government told Parliament that it had been “decided as a matter of policy not to enumerate caste-wise population other than SCs and STs in Census”.

Several petitions demanding a caste census are pending before the Supreme Court.

What happens now

The 2021 Census was delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic, and has been on hold ever since. The exercise is understood to be imminent, but there are no dates for it as yet. Meanwhile, the pressure on the government to hold a caste census has increased steadily.

Operationally, the Census is a massive exercise that has two distinct parts: House Listing and Housing Census, and Population Enumeration. The Census questionnaire for 2021 had been finalised before the exercise had to be put off. In October 2024, the government extended the tenure of RGI Mritunjay Kumar Narayan until August 2026.

The data collected by the Census will impact government policy and boundaries of political constituencies. The full delimitation of Lok Sabha and Assembly constituencies, which has been on hold since 1971, is frozen until “the first Census taken after the year 2026”.

The reservation for women in legislatures announced by the government is also dependent on the Census and delimitation.

And the caste census is certain to give a fillip to the demand for increased reservations for certain communities, and for sub-categorisation within caste categories, particularly among the OBCs.