CASTE CENSUS: WILL IT CLEAR AIR OR MUDDY WATERS?

Caste identity is often fluid, making reliable data collection difficult. Add to it the lobbying by communities for favourable classification, and it becomes nearly impossible to paint the correct picture

- SUGATA SRINIVASARAJU

Not long ago, the Union government announced it would conduct a caste census along with the regular census. However, it has not told us explicitly as to why it plans to conduct the caste census after opposing it for a prolonged period. Since social justice is the idea associated with it, one has to assume this decision serves that singular end, notwithstanding that the phrase 'social justice' is a much-trampled term in Indian politics. It can mean a whole set of things without actually meaning anything for the truly oppressed.

Of course, the timing of the government's decision has been attributed to political expediency—the Bihar assembly polls. But beyond Bihar, it speaks to a certain vulnerability and inevitable accommodation of a coalition set up. It also allows for other Mandal and Dravidian parties and their electorates to look at the BJP more favorably in the near future. In a sense, it could cause power realignments where necessary.

More than snatching away an obsessive plank from the Congress, caste census could be the BJP's move to strategically delink Mandal parties from the former. It may want to smash the idea of the caste-narrative as a binary opposite of the religion-narrative that it commands. With this move, the BJP comes across as an all-encompassing behemoth. No narrative is outside its purview anymore. The Congress on the other hand looks like it has shrunk its worldview, and surrendered its pan-national appeal. All this said, one has to still confront the toughest and the most basic question about the caste census. It may offer abundant data, but how does one really enumerate caste in present-day India? How does one verify that data, and how does one interpret it when uncertainties exist about its very accuracy?