Finally Bihar political parties agree to a caste-based count

Bihar
Image Courtesy:thestatesman.com/

After much debate, the political parties in Bihar have agreed to do a caste-based ‘count’ rather than census to avoid legal complications, said Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on June 2, 2022.

According to NDTV, Kumar said that all parties had agreed to the suggestion, including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has persistently opposed a caste-based census. Now, the government has to pass the proposal in the cabinet to implement the survey.

Speaking to the media persons later Kumar said, “The aim is that every section of the society can progress properly.” Although he did not provide many details, Opposition leader of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) Tejashwi Yadav implied that the survey will be done after festival season in the state.

A count based on caste is not new in India. Other states like Karnataka, Odisha and Telangana have already done similar counts dubbed as ‘socio-economic surveys’. When the Congress-led UPA central government was in power, a national caste census was conducted. However, the information was not released. After the BJP-led NDA central government, authorities refused to carry out a caste-based census. Nowadays states are left to decide whether they want to conduct such surveys.

As recently as September 2021, 16 activists and Civil Society Organisations based out of West Bengal wrote to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Modi to initiate a full caste enumeration in the forthcoming census. Signatories pointed out that Maharashtra and Odisha governments specifically requested a caste census. However, the Centre said it had no intention to enumerate caste-wise populations other than Scheduled Castes and Tribes “as a matter of policy” during Lok Sabha sessions.

A full-caste enumeration has not been undertaken since the 1931 Census. Numerous government policies, including major benefit schemes, are implemented on the basis of claimed population share of caste groups. No one knows the actual population size of any caste except for SCs and STs.

For this reason, many parties have supported the move for a caste-survey with the only disagreeing party being the BJP. Kumar’s Janata Dal United (JDU) party is allied with the BJP in Bihar. In 2021, Kumar met Prime Minister Narendra Modi to push for a caste-based census. Most parties, including the opposition, were in favour of the census. However, the State BJP remained unwilling to differ from its central-level stand.

This is because the Centre considers such surveys to be divisive. Although others argue that such data points help in formulating more focused policies for the most neglected in society. In September last year, the central government told the Supreme Court that a caste census of the Backward Classes is “administratively difficult and cumbersome”.