Aug 30, 2024 09:26 PM IST
Any push for a caste census cannot be solely motivated by electoral designs. Focus should be on schemes to help the most marginalised
Caste is India’s oldest fault line; manifestations are complex — sometimes visceral, at other times insidious. The Constituent Assembly had taken a call to institute among the world’s biggest affirmative action programmes through caste-based reservations and ban untouchability in its efforts to stamp out the perils of caste. Independent India’s decadal census eschewed the colonial practice of physically counting every caste, instead focussing on an enumeration of faiths and scheduled castes and tribes. Despite an expansion of the affirmative action mandate that triggered a political upheaval, and the introduction of a tough anti-discrimination law for scheduled castes and tribes, that compact on enumeration largely held through seven decades.
Until, it appears, now. Over the past two years, a host of parties have pushed for a fresh enumeration of castes, ranging from the Congress, SP and RJD (all opposed to the BJP) and NDA members JD(U) and LJP (Ram Vilas). Even the BJP has maintained strategic silence on the topic, carefully sidestepping the question during polls. The issue has also come up before the parliamentary panel for the welfare of OBCs, with the Opposition and JD(U) pushing for a discussion. After being one of the central planks of the general elections, the caste census is here to stay as a political issue.
There are broadly three views. The first — articulated by anti-caste thinkers for decades and only recently picked up by mainstream parties — is that such a census is important to understand the granular effect of caste on education, employment, economic attainment levels and intergenerational mobility. They argue that since caste is a socioeconomic reality, having hard data on its impact is the only way to frame policies. Eliding the effect of caste, they add, skews the scales even more against marginalised groups.
The second is the motivation for political parties. The Opposition believes that the caste census can be a force multiplier to the economic disenchantment and fear about reservations that cleaved a chunk of the Dalit and OBC vote from the BJP’s kitty in the Lok Sabha polls. They calculate that a caste census will create a political churn on the lines of the Mandal Commission tumult in the 1990s, reducing space for the BJP’s faith-based mobilisation. Some of the NDA members are beneficiaries of the Mandal churn and see the caste census as the logical next step in their political agenda.
The third view is that a census will only widen fault lines and intensify caste feelings. Its advocates point out that the British-era enumeration was far from perfect and the 2011 attempt — the caste data from the socioeconomic caste census was never released — was riddled with errors. They believe that a progressive society enumerating caste is a defeat for modernity.
No view should monopolise the discussion. The aim of any policy has to be its ability to improve the lives of the most downtrodden. The proposal for a caste census should be evaluated against this benchmark, not on narrow political considerations. But no census can alleviate the perils of caste if persistent problems with the implementation of affirmative action are not remedied. And no exercise can help weaker castes if authorities continue to be lax in prosecuting caste-based crimes. And no debate on the caste census can begin until there is movement on the long-delayed decadal census. Nuance, empathy and transparency need to drive this discussion, and the ordinary citizen, not politicians, should be at its core.
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