Why fear caste census ?

BJP’s setback in the 2024 LS poll made political analysts run for their money to select the exact reason for the drubbing. Despite a load of such reasons, the mainspring was the ‘caste census’ ploy and the opposition’s nicely worked attention-grabbing campaign. Janata Dal leader Nitish Kumar, who implemented the caste census in Bihar long before the elections, is now an ally of BJP and remains a political enigma.

In 2023, the caste-based census was implemented in Bihar for the first time in the country. Some people went to the Supreme Court against it but to no avail. Whenever the demand for a caste census was raised, the BJP and some of its allies opposed it head-on. NDA parties must have thought that it would be humiliating for them to do the exercise which can later backfire.

It was at this juncture of ambiguity that the INDI alliance and Congress vowed to do the census if elected to power. Unbeknownst at that time, this single message created ripples within the masses and the effect reflected upon the LS poll results. Though late by a sufficient margin, the ruling party have now fully understood how the caste census worked as a trump card for the opposition. The indications coming from the government sources say the central government are open for the caste census procedure in India.

The Indi alliance has already announced that it will implement the decision of caste census if it gets a majority in the state assembly elections. The statistics of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are recorded separately in each census. However, the government does not have a centralized calculation of other categories. Apart from the census, the UPA government conducted a caste census a decade and a half ago. But that figure never came out.

Similarly, the Congress government in Karnataka also took action for this in 2015. However, the collected figure was not made public. It has been argued that the complexities of caste enumeration pose a problem for accurate statistical collection. This argument can be seen as an attempt to evade responsibility.

The census in the country should have been conducted three years ago. Statistics related to population are required for all areas related to development. Caste census is not a grave crime and expect no serious repercussions. The ongoing delay is unacceptable.