Cabinet nod for first caste census in 80 years

Cabinet nod for first caste census in 80 years

NEW DELHI: The caste census is on. The contentious and often divisive debate over enumerating caste may linger, but the Union Cabinet on Thursday bit the bullet deciding to hold a caste-wise headcount, the first since 1931, which will be conducted from June-September in 2011 after the regular enumeration is over.

The decision to hold a separate enumeration based on caste seeks to balance the demand by OBC satraps for a caste count with the fear that doing so would affect the accuracy of numbers with caste groups trying to inflate their numbers in hopes of gains like bigger quotas.

Government has taken into account the possibility of claims being exaggerated and has planned to tally the results of the caste-wise count with the findings of the regular census as well as the details of the National Population Register (NPR) prepared on the basis of household surveys which have already been completed.

The decision will still be seen as a victory for the OBC lobby that pressured the government to reverse the decision not to use caste as an enumerating criterion and then, later, successfully resisted the plans to dovetail the caste count with the biometric stage.

The OBC lobbies are keen to frame their next round of reservation politics based on caste numbers as they are confident that backwards are a good deal more that 50% of the population. This can lead to demands to amend the Supreme Court ceiling of 50% on quotas. The flip side is that it could also spur calls for splitting reservations for sub-castes to the detriment of the "elite" among the Mandal castes which have a disproportionate share of reservation benefits.

In the meeting on Thursday, the proposal for the caste count did face some resistance, though much less than in earlier cabinet meetings. Minister for heavy industries Vilasrao Deshmukh pointed to the possibility of caste numbers being inflated, like in claims for reserving a certain constituency.

Minister for highways Kamal Nath pointed out the "status" of castes from one region to another.

OBC leaders had opposed the idea of doing a caste count at the biometric stage by expressing the fear that social conditions in many backward regions would deter backwards from reaching camps set up for the purpose.

The government, while appreciating the argument that unlike in the house-to-house survey it would be more difficult for OBCs to approach camps set up to record biometric information to record their caste, also had to keep in mind the need to ensure a correct headcount. There was a fear of numbers being inflated in a caste-cum-population count.

The way out of this dilemma -- approved by the cabinet on Thursday -- was a separate caste count after the current census operations are over. This would mean the NPR -- linked to the unique identification number project -- would be in place by the time caste enumeration begins.

The officials engaged in the caste count would visit households registered in the NPR and ask them to name their caste with the option not to do so as well. This way the integrity of the population numbers would be frozen before the caste count.

Objections have been raised to the separate headcount on grounds that it involves another Rs 2,000 crore and also because the June-September period coincides with the later part of summer and the entire monsoon. This might lead to an extended survey.

Read more: Cabinet nod for first caste census in 80 years - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Cabinet-nod-for-first-caste-census-in-80-years/articleshow/6526794.cms#ixzz0z4fFEeTG