‘Open-ended’ caste census format misleading: Kharge, Rahul write to PM Modi
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New Delhi: Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge and Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi have written a joint letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, raising concerns over the proposed “open-ended” format for collecting caste data in the Census.
The Congress leaders cautioned that the format could result in the same caste being recorded under different names, making the data inaccurate. They instead urged the government to introduce a “drop-down list of castes” in the Census form.
Emphasising that social justice policies in India “cannot be effectively formulated without accurate data”, Kharge and Gandhi said a precise assessment of the numerical strength and socio-economic status of different castes was possible only if caste enumeration was conducted correctly.
“Your government has opted for an ‘open-ended’ question format to record caste details during the Census, an approach that is misleading. Under this method, whatever name an individual provides for their caste will be recorded as it is,” they said in the letter.
The Congress leaders pointed out that the same caste is often known by different names, sub-castes and linguistic variations across regions. If members of the same caste are recorded under different names, they cautioned, “a single caste could end up being fragmented into thousands of distinct entries”.
“This would result in the emergence of hundreds of thousands of caste names, rendering the entire dataset obtained from the caste census useless,” they said.
They further argued that if the population of a community is not accurately recorded, any assessment of its status would inevitably be flawed.
“This will disadvantage backward, extremely backward, and other marginalised communities, and will also impact decisions regarding education, employment, welfare schemes, and social justice,” the letter said.
The Congress leaders also said the proposed method would fail to reveal the actual size of the OBC population in India, as the term “Backward Class” was not included in the Census.
As a solution, Kharge and Gandhi called for a “drop-down list of castes” to be created. They noted that a similar method is used to enumerate Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
Such a list, they said, could be compiled using existing government lists, including those for Socially and Educationally Backward Classes, along with data from the Anthropological Survey of India.
They also pointed out that the same approach had been adopted in caste surveys conducted in Telangana and Bihar. The Congress leaders attached the caste lists from both surveys to their letter for reference.
“We do not accept the caste census being conducted in this manner,” Kharge and Gandhi said, urging the government to scrap the current questionnaire and prepare a new one after consulting political parties, experts and the public.
The Congress said this would ensure that the true numbers of every caste and community are captured, making the caste census accurate, meaningful and beneficial.
With IANS inputs