05-05-2025
- Politics
- New Indian Express
Why the Census isn't an answer to all questions
The Union government has announced that caste enumeration would be a part of the next nationwide census. Population enumeration by castes has not been published after 1931. The reason being that caste was a colonial invention that tried to replace varna and jati, and later amended with ethnographic surveys, occupation and social hierarchies.
This attempt made caste a fluid identity, making it inconvenient to fit into the diverse social systems in India. However, caste debates based on the censuses from 1881 to 1931 continue till today. A list of castes can be enforced by law, while social identities continue to be more varied—the consequent problems should be tackled.
Another real problem may crop up about estimating the socio-economic characteristics of each caste to design reservation policies and deliver welfare schemes. This can be captured only when a full-fledged census that includes a large number of socio-economic variables and caste information is conducted under the purview of the Census Act.
Even after enumeration, a better validation of the census data is always required, as it is also prone to errors. It is to be noted that the net omission rate, measured as the ratio of the number of omitted persons per 1,000 persons enumerated in the census after adjusting for duplication, was nearly 20 percent on average in the last four decennial exercises.
A general practice of a census operation is that it is followed by a Post-Enumeration Survey (PES), which involves carrying out an independent survey for a sample of the population to ascertain the accuracy of the information. The PES helps in identifying under-enumeration or over-enumeration across coverage areas. India has conducted a PES after every decennial census, but has not published the data gathered or the error corrections. This only increases our apprehension about the quality of enumeration and estimation from the census.
