Conducting Caste Census

Udayan Hazarika

(The writer can be reached at udayanhazarika@hotmail.com)

Now that the government has finally decided to go for enumerating the caste populations of the country in the next census, it is amply clear that the government conceded to the demands of the various political parties and states for conducting a caste census side by side with the next general census, keeping an eye on the forthcoming general elections of the Bihar legislative assembly. The government announcement has three major aspects, namely 1) the caste population will be enumerated in the next census—whenever it is held (till now the month has not been specified); 2) the caste data will be captured in the final phase of the enumeration; and 3) depending on census statistics, the next delimitation exercise as per constitutional provision will be held after 2026.

The last caste data was captured during the 1931 census, and thereafter the idea of enumerating caste population was abandoned.   Why do we really need the caste population data? The caste census indicates, apart from other communities, the strength of the Other Backward Class (OBC) and most Other Backward Class (MOBC) communities. They are outside the purview of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, whose populations are regularly enumerated by the census. But for the OBCs and MOBCs, we do not have any population data backed by the census. The Constitution of India has not defined the terms OBC or MOBC. Article 340 of the Constitution empowers the President of India to appoint a commission to investigate the conditions of the socially and educationally backward classes and the difficulties they face and make recommendations to remove such difficulties. Exercising this power, the government has so far constituted two commissions for the purpose. The first OBC Commission was appointed in the year 1953 under the chairmanship of Kaka Kalelkar. The Kalelkar Commission submitted its report to the government in the year 1955, which, however, was not accepted by the government on various grounds; rather, the government directed the states to take their own action on the matter of identification of OBCs and reservation of jobs and seats for them. This action of the government led to the existence of two lists of OBCs—namely, the state-level list and the central-level list. This system continues to date. The Second OBC commission was set up in the year 1978 when Morarji Desai was the Prime Minister under the chairmanship of Bindeswari Prasad Mandol, or the famous Mondal Commission. The Mondal Commission for the first time estimated the total population of OBC/MOBCs on the basis of caste census data as recorded in the 1931 census. The Commission prepared an elaborate framework for estimating the caste population and finally, after detailed estimates, arrived at a conclusion that the size of the caste population in India would be around 52 per percent of the total population. Accordingly, the Commission would have proposed 52 per percent reservation for the OBC/MOBC but for the restrictions imposed by the apex court in various cases to not exceed the reservation limit beyond 50 per percent as a whole, restrained itself, and advised the government to go for 27 per percent reservation for OBC and MOBCs.

The government’s recent decision to capture OBC data during the next census operation has been welcomed by people from various walks of life. It is indeed a long-pending demand. The demand has gained momentum after the caste-based survey completed by Bihar. The Bihar caste-based survey found the total strength of the population of OBC/MOBC at 65 per percent of the total population. Following this, the Bihar government also enhanced the reservation limit for the OBC/MOBCs in the state, which, however, was set aside by the High Court, and now the case is pending in the Supreme Court. The present move of the Union Government about the caste census—at a time when the Bihar Assembly elections are just about a month away—has also been looked upon as a move to appease the Bihar voters.  

By virtue of the fact that the “Census” is a subject in the Union List (Serial No. 69) of the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution, conducting a census is a matter that falls exclusively within the domain of the central government. The detailed guidelines for conducting the census are laid down in the Indian Census Act 1948. Under Section 3 of the Act, conducting censuses is a statutory duty of the Central Government. The government performs this duty through the office of the Registrar General of India (ORGI). Although the Act does not specify a specific date or time for conducting the census, it has been customary to conduct the census every ten years throughout our 150-year history of census operations. The present exception of not being able to conduct the 17th census in time is the first of its kind in our census history. For the purpose of conducting the 2021 census, initially, the ORGI issued notifications in 2018. The then Home Minister Rajnath Singh also announced in 2018 that the caste population of the country would also be enumerated side by side with the normal census. But unfortunately, the term of the 17th Lok Sabha came to an end in 2019, and after the fresh elections, although the BJP came to power, they decided not to follow up on the caste census issue. However, the sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 forced the government to keep the whole process of the census operation in abeyance indefinitely. More than five years have elapsed since the year of the census, and the government have yet to make up their mind about the time for conducting the next census.

The Indian Census is a huge affair involving lakhs of workers enumerating crores of people spending crores of rupees. It needs sufficient time for its preparation from freezing of the boundaries of administrative units—from the village and upward, both existing and updated, till publication of the tables. Immediately after freezing the boundaries of the administrative units, ORGI prepares an initial plan for house listing with these data. Usually, the house listing phase requires more than six months’ time. But in this census, the information will be directly entered into the website for each house. The enumerators will carry with them the necessary apparatuses, such as tablets, mobiles, laptops, etc. Moreover, by amending the relevant rules—namely, Rules 2 and 5 of the Census Rules 1990—in 2022, the government has now enabled “self-enumeration,” by which the respondents can fill out the census forms themselves.

It seems that the government is in a hurry to complete the census operation and then start the process of delimitation of the Lok Sabha and Assembly constituencies. Under Articles 82 and 170 of the Constitution, it could be done only after the completion of a census operation taken after the year 2026. So, in the most probable cases, the government will attempt to conduct a census in the year 2027, and then after the completion of the delimitation process using the census data, they will attempt to go for a nationwide election in the form of ‘one nation, one election’.