Census that has to be more than just a head count

Hindustan Times

15 hours ago

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. For instance, using data from its caste census, the Telangana government has created a sub-quota for particularly marginalised Scheduled Caste (SC) jatis within the broader SC reservation quota. This does not increase the overall SC share in public jobs, but ensures that historically left-behind Scheduled Caste (SC) jatis have a fairer chance. If the national caste census includes occupation data by jati, it can illuminate why some communities remain trapped in insecure, informal work while others diversify. Unless we make caste visible in our understanding of labour markets, we cannot address the structural roots of inequality in employment outcomes.
The second is centralisation. India is among the most centralised countries in the world: only 3% of all public expenditure is made by local governments, compared to 51% in China. Key governance decisions are made in Delhi and there is simply not enough wiggle-room for federal and local governments. Yogendra Yadav has previously argued that a caste census is a diagnostic tool — the X-ray before the prescription.
But a well-executed caste census can be more than an X-ray of a broken limb. It is a high-resolution, full-body scan. It offers a hyperlocal picture of Indian society — who lives where, who owns what, who does what — allowing for policies that respond to the specificities of place.
Over time, the objective should be to invert the current governance model — one in which Union and state governments play a supporting role while village and municipal governments chart their own development paths. A caste census can help accelerate this transition. One long-standing concern with decentralisation, articulated most forcefully by BR Ambedkar when he described villages as 'dens of ignorance', is the risk of elite capture: The possibility that decentralised governance will merely consolidate the power of dominant castes. India — and its villages and towns — has changed considerably since Ambedkar made that assessment, but the problem of elite capture exists to varying degrees. A caste census can offer a granular view of where power is concentrated and where it is more diffuse. It can help identify which local governments are dominated by a single elite group and which display broader representation. This allows policymakers to tailor the pace and sequencing of decentralisation — perhaps beginning where elite capture is lower, building capacity and trust, and expanding from there. A caste census, therefore, enables us to approach decentralisation more intelligently.
The third challenge is the growing marginalisation of Indian Muslims. A 2024 study by Asher, Novosad, and Rafkin shows that Muslims are now the least upwardly mobile group in India — faring worse than even Dalits and Adivasis when it comes to educational progress over generations. Another recent analysis by Himanshu and Guilmoto (2024) using data from Bihar's caste census finds that Muslims, as a group, are located near the bottom of the state's economic distribution — in some cases, below Mahadalit groups. What's more, the study finds that this deprivation is strikingly uniform: Across jatis like Pathans, Sheikhs, and Ansaris, economic indicators remain consistently poor.
This makes a strong case for targeted policy action. But politics at the national level may not allow for it. States, however, can. A caste census gives state governments the tools to recognise and respond to intra-Muslim variation and provide tailored support — in housing, education, political representation — to those who need it most.
Crucially, none of this is possible unless the data reaches the people. In India, data flows from citizen to State — but rarely the other way around. This must change. Marginalised groups should be able to view their own position relative to others — both within their localities and across districts. Platforms such gram sabhas can be used to disseminate findings, supported by civil society and domain experts. When citizens see that their mohallas and communities have done worse than others, they are more likely to mobilise and demand change. Equally, elected representatives — from ward members to MLAs — should receive localised reports that compare their jurisdictions with others. This is how data becomes a tool for accountability — not just for the state to monitor citizens, but for citizens to challenge the state.
India's caste census, then, must do more than count heads. It can be both a mirror that reflects the structure of society and a lever for meaningful, democratic change.
MR Sharan teaches at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Last Among Equals: Caste and Politics in Bihar's Villages. The views expressed are personal