What are the key objectives of caste count?

The story so far: The Union Cabinet has decided that the next Census will include questions on caste to its enumeration of India’s population, for the first time in almost a century.

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The decision, a reversal of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) stance so far, comes ahead of the crucial Bihar elections, and throws up myriad challenges.

Have Indians been counted by caste before?

When the British first started counting India’s population in 1881, caste data was included in the information gathered. For the next half-century, the decennial censuses collected caste information. The last time that data was published was from the 1931 census, which counted 4,147 castes and sub-castes across the country. Though the wartime 1941 census also collected data on individual castes, it was never released. After India gained Independence, the government decided to avoid the question of caste in the census, only counting Scheduled Castes and Tribes (SCs/STs).

In his report on the 1931 census, then-Census Commissioner J.H. Hutton dismissed the arguments of those who did not wish to collect caste and religion data on the grounds that they would perpetuate divisions, noting that “the census cannot, however, hide its head in the sand like the proverbial ostrich, but must record as accurately as possible facts as they exist.” He struck down previous British attempts to list a hierarchy of castes, in accordance with their perceived ranks in society, instead choosing to use occupations as the basis of classification, though this did not account for the fluidity of caste identities and the variations in caste names across time and geographies. The 1931 census data was also the basis for reservation efforts half a century later; its finding that 52% of the country’s population belonged to castes later grouped under the Other Backward Class (OBC) category became the basis of the Mandal Commission's recommendation for a 27% quota for OBCs in education and government jobs.