Census that has to be more than just a head count

Caste data will help in plotting deprivation and fine-tuning affirmative action policies

- MR Sharan

The Union government announced this week that the long-delayed census will be carried out in two phases with the reference date of March 1, 2027. For the Union Territory of Ladakh and the snow-bound areas of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the reference date will be October 1, 2026.

Late April, the Centre announced that caste enumeration will be a part of the next decennial census. This is a significant shift. I have previously argued in these pages that a carefully conducted caste census offers more positives than negatives, but two considerations must be taken seriously. First, the data must be collected with care. Second, the data must be made accessible—not just to policymakers and researchers, but to the people themselves.

India's three most urgent structural challenges over the next two decades are clear—job creation, rising centralisation, and the growing social and economic marginalisation of Muslims. A well-designed caste census can speak to all three. This is not to suggest that such a census will resolve these challenges outright, but it can meaningfully illuminate specific aspects of each.

The first challenge concerns employment—or rather, the lack of meaningful, secure work for large segments of India's population. Caste in India has long been closely tied to occupational hierarchies. We need a clearer map of who is doing what work today, which jatis dominate the public sector, which remain concentrated in casual labour, who has exited traditional caste-based occupations, and who remains locked into them. Without this information, it is difficult to design effective affirmative action policies, employment guarantees, skilling programmes, or education pipelines.