09-05-2025
India's Data-Driven Reckoning Over Caste
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The last time India asked its citizens to self-identify by caste, the survey generated 4.6 million different categories in the millennia-old system of social stratification. It was likely the result of interchangeable names for the same castes in the country's vast array of languages, regions and subcultures. That 2011 data was deemed unusable — foiled by an open-ended question — in the epic quest for equality in the world's most populous nation. The last time useful numbers were produced was in 1931, in a census by British colonial authorities. That produced 4,000 answers.
