Prelims
- Which Constitutional Article places the Census exclusively under the Union list?
- Arrange in descending order of population share: EBC (Bihar), BC (Telangana), SC (Bihar), General (Bihar).
- The Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Teachers’ Cadre) Act, 2019 relates to which sector?
Mains (GS-II/Governance)
- “Counting caste is essential for equitable public policy, not social fragmentation.” Analyse.
- How can a national caste census operationalise a social management approach to welfare delivery?
Context
The Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs, led by PM Modi, has approved caste enumeration in the upcoming national Census. Under Article 246 and the Seventh Schedule, the Census is a Union subject, giving the Centre full legislative competence.
Key State-level Insights
- Bihar Caste Survey 2023: OBC + EBC 63.1% (EBC alone 36.0%), SC 19.7%, ST 1.7%, General 15.5%. Over 34% of families survive on < ₹200/day; for SC households the figure is 44%.
- Telangana Survey 2025: BCs constitute 56.3%, including 10.1% BC Muslims.
These figures highlight that the social majority remains economically and politically under-represented.
Representation Gap
Parliamentary data show OBCs hold only 4 % of professor and 6 % of associate-professor posts across 45 Central Universities; 85 % of these positions are occupied by the general category, despite the 2019 Reservation Act.
Why Fresh National Data Matter
India’s last comprehensive caste count was in 1931; the 2011 SECC was never fully released due to inconsistencies. Without reliable numbers, quotas, budgets and welfare schemes rest on guesswork, limiting constitutional promises of equality.
Social Management Approach
Contrasting with blanket, top-down welfare, this model:
- Starts with granular data – caste, income, gender, region.
- Targets need-based interventions, treating caste as a developmental variable, not a stigma.
- State precedents: Tamil Nadu reallocates scholarships and reservations via Backward Classes Commission data; Karnataka is recalibrating quotas using its 2023 survey.
Potential National Gains
- Disaggregated budgeting for health, education, housing based on caste-linked gaps.
- Diversity audits of universities, bureaucracy and public-sector entities.
- Real-time monitoring of flagship schemes (PM Awas Yojana, Skill India) for caste reach.
- Public transparency: open datasets empower citizens to track fund flow and expose elite capture within castes.
Global Parallels
The US, South Africa and Brazil routinely collect race/ethnicity data to enforce civil-rights legislation—demonstrating that counting identity enables, rather than impedes, social justice.
Conclusion
A rigorously executed, publicly accessible caste census can transform governance from intuition-based to evidence-based, helping India align economic growth with constitutional equity in both letter and spirit.
A different approach to the caste census – The Hindu, June 12, 2025
