Government dropped use of OBC lists for Census as those featured ‘classes, not castes’, say officials

The Union authorities had thought-about utilizing the Central listing and the States’ lists of Different Backward Lessons (OBCs) whereas deciding that the 2027 Census will use an open-column methodology to enumerate castes, officers instructed The Hindu. Nonetheless, following deliberations, it emerged that this could current an issue “as a result of the listing of OBCs is just not an inventory of castes, it’s a listing of lessons”, the officers stated.

Based on the officers, a number of entries in OBC lists don’t characterize a caste however describe “totally different teams of individuals, like these engaged in begging”. The same downside arose when contemplating using States’ lists. One official stated these points surfaced whereas the federal government was assessing whether or not the methodology utilized in State-conducted caste surveys, equivalent to in Bihar and Telangana, may very well be replicated.

The federal government is enumerating Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities with the corresponding Presidential lists, because it has at all times performed. However an open column for “all different castes” has prompted OBC teams and Opposition leaders, equivalent to Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge, to demand that the communities be listed and enumerated particularly. They’ve questioned the utility of the open-column methodology.

Opposition leaders and a number of other students have argued that the open-column methodology might yield outcomes much like these of the Socio-Financial Caste Census of 2011, which threw up over 46 lakh caste names. The Narendra Modi authorities had cited this as a motive to not launch the caste information from that train.

Officers concerned within the caste enumeration methodology stated the choices mentioned had respective “professionals and cons”, including that the open-column methodology was finalised solely after contemplating the opposite choices on the “highest ranges”.

Officers stated that whereas discussing using Central or State OBC lists to enumerate caste communities, the principle subject was whether or not all communities listed may very well be counted as castes. The lists had entries equivalent to “native borns” within the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, entries describing occupational teams, or these denoting a selected class of labourers (tea backyard staff in Assam), or settlers, which might not qualify as castes.

Whereas each the Central and State lists of OBCs have such entries, they comprise a minority among the many almost 3,000 communities labeled as OBC. Additionally, a number of communities that could be within the OBC lists of 1 State could also be labeled as both SC or ST in others.

In a 2015 doc on whether or not an OBC neighborhood could be labeled based mostly on caste alone, the Nationwide Fee for Backward Lessons had concluded, “A caste could be and very often is a social class in India… Since caste represents an present, identifiable, social group/class encompassing an amazing minority of the nation’s inhabitants, one can properly start with it after which go to different teams, sections, and lessons.”

A 12 months after the BJP misplaced its majority within the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, within the lead-up to which the Opposition campaigned for a caste census, the Union Cupboard of the third Narendra Modi-led authorities accepted a plan to incorporate caste within the 2027 Census kinds. One of many Opposition’s predominant arguments for the caste census was the necessity to enumerate the OBC inhabitants, a determine estimated to date on the 1931 caste census information.