More Than Caste Census, The Need Is For Census 2021 At The Earliest
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By Our Editorial Team
First publised on 2023-08-30 13:36:04
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The India Commentary view
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The Centre, after wading in the caste census controversy for the first time by filing an affidavit in the Supreme Court, changed its stance in the matter of hours. It first filed an affidavit where it contended that as per the Census Act, 1948, the Centre was the sole authority to conduct a census or even "any action akin to it". But later in the day, it filed a supplementary affidavit to remove the paragraph that referred to "any action akin" to census. Why was this done? Is the Centre worried that with most opposition parties supporting the caste census, it would give them a stick to beat the BJP with if it takes an inflexible and hard stance against caste census? There is no doubt that by insisting on the caste census, the opposition parties are hoping to dent BJP's carefully crafted strategy to bring Dalits and OBCs under its fold and expand the Hindutva constituency. They are ignoring the can of worms - in terms of additional demands for reservation and other government schemes that are likely to arise from such census - that will certainly be opened once an all-India caste census is done. Sociologist Andre Beteille has said, "caste is a device of political manipulation". There is no doubt that caste census is going to rpovide the data set to be used for such manipulation. The opposition parties want to make it a Mandal 2.0 versus Kamandal fight in 2024 and hence they are giving their all to force the Centre to agree to caste census.
But the problem is that the Centre is yet to take up the 2021 census which was postponed in 2020. It is surprising that despite knowing that the decennial census is important for many reasons, not the least for creating a statistical base for formulating future policies of the government, the Centre is still sleeping on the issue. The last census was carried out more than 10 years ago. India has changed drastically in these 10 years. If the 2021 census is not carried out immediately, the already poor quality of data dished out by the national statistical system will deteriorate further, making is very difficult for economists to carry out research models or for the government to make relevant policies. Further, it also not incorrect to assume that if Census 2021 had been carried out as per schedule, maybe there would have been no demand for conducting caste census. Hence, along with opposing the caste census, the Centre would do well to conduct census 2021 soon, although it will not be out before 2024 and even that is looking improbable as the census exercise takes 11 months but more three months in 2024 will be lost due to the general elections.
