I have never understood the fashionable Delhi habit of treating ignorance as social harmony. India designs reservations, scholarships, welfare schemes and electoral strategies around caste, yet for decades the state has lacked a current, comprehensive count of communities outside the constitutionally enumerated Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. That is not transcendence. It is policymaking by rear-view mirror.
The Modi government’s decision to include caste enumeration in Census 2027 is therefore more consequential than the grudging reception it received. The official Census timetable confirms that the exercise will run in two phases and include caste. A later Lok Sabha reply on the census proforma records that the Registrar General was finalising the questionnaire under the Census Rules. Those are administrative statements, not campaign poetry, and that distinction matters.
The opposition won an argument, but not a monopoly
Congress and several regional parties had demanded a caste census. They are entitled to say their pressure helped move the debate. What they are not entitled to do is pretend that repeating “jitni abadi, utna haq” constitutes an implementation plan. Counting thousands of caste names, spellings, sub-castes and regional synonyms is a classification problem of extraordinary sensitivity. A slogan can fit on a placard; a national code directory cannot.
The Union government was right to place the exercise inside the decennial census rather than commission another stand-alone survey of uncertain legal and statistical status. Census administration has established chains of responsibility, training systems and nationwide coverage. It also creates the possibility of relating caste to housing, education, occupation and other demographic characteristics, subject to privacy safeguards. A caste number without socioeconomic context would be political ammunition. Properly designed census data can be public infrastructure.
I also give the government credit for changing its mind. Political commentary often treats consistency as the highest virtue, even when consistency merely means remaining wrong with impressive discipline. The BJP previously resisted a general caste count, understandably fearing that it would sharpen identity competition and destabilise its broader coalition. But the demand acquired democratic legitimacy across parties and states. Adapting to that reality is not capitulation; it is governing.
Publication will matter more than enumeration
My support comes with a large condition. India has already experienced the frustration of collecting caste-related information and then failing to release a clean, useful dataset. Census 2027 cannot end with ministers announcing that millions of raw entries require indefinite examination. Before enumeration begins, the government should publish the classification method, treatment of self-described identities, correction process, anonymisation rules and a credible release calendar.
Privacy deserves more than ceremonial reassurance. A digital census can reduce transcription errors and speed processing, but it also concentrates sensitive information. The state must explain which identifiers are separated from analytical records, who can access identifiable data, how long operational information is retained and what audit trail applies to officials. Citizens should not have to choose between being counted and being profiled.
The counterargument is that caste enumeration will deepen caste consciousness. I take that concern seriously. Political entrepreneurs will seize on every percentage and demand mechanically proportional rewards. Yet suppressing information does not dissolve identity; it gives organised groups and incumbent elites an advantage because they possess private estimates while everyone else argues from folklore. Good data cannot guarantee good politics, but bad data practically guarantees manipulative politics.
Do not turn a census into an instant quota formula
The first misuse to resist is the claim that population share automatically determines entitlement in every institution. Representation, historical exclusion, educational disadvantage, administrative feasibility and constitutional doctrine are related but distinct questions. A census measures people; it does not amend the Constitution by spreadsheet. Parliament, state legislatures, commissions and courts will still have work to do.
The second misuse will be selective outrage. Parties will celebrate numbers that strengthen their coalitions and question the methodology where they do not. That is why technical independence and transparent documentation are essential. The Registrar General must be allowed to explain categories and limitations without every answer being rewritten as a party talking point.
The third danger is treating caste data as a substitute for development. A community’s headcount cannot repair a school, staff a health centre or create a productive job. The most valuable use of the exercise would be to expose where deprivation actually overlaps with caste and where broad labels conceal substantial internal inequality. That could make welfare more precise and force parties to justify benefits with evidence rather than inherited rhetoric.
Congress deserves limited credit for keeping the issue alive, but its own record counsels against nostalgia. The UPA conducted the Socio Economic and Caste Census and left behind a data-processing tangle rather than the definitive public account its advocates expected. The current government should learn from that failure, not merely mention it. Delivery is the difference between an opposition demand and a governing achievement.
My position is uncomplicated: count honestly, protect identities, publish promptly and legislate soberly. If the Modi government does all four, it will have converted one of India’s most combustible political demands into durable policy infrastructure. If it counts and then hesitates to release, the opposition will fairly accuse it of wanting the symbolism without the consequences. For now, however, the decision itself is a reform worth defending—and one that punctures the lazy claim that this government can respond to social realities only through denial.
