• Dr. Naresh Patel ‘Guruji’

For the policy making of any country, the information of its citizens is required, for which the government conducts the census. In the caste census, along with all the information of the citizens, information about their castes is also collected. The government gets to know about the level of different castes, the level of their forwardness and backwardness, their representation in government jobs and other information from the caste census. The information regarding which castes are benefitted from the government schemes and which castes remain bereft of them, comes to the fore through caste census, after which proper steps can be taken for the upliftment of the castes left behind in the mainstream of the society.

Now let’s talk about the different classes living in India. After independence, the government determined four classes on the basis of social and educational status of Indian citizens Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes, Other Backward Classes, General.

OBC means ‘Other Backward Classes’. It is a section of the Indian society which is socially and educationally backward. Under Article 340(1), the Second Backward Classes Commission (1979) was formed under the chairmanship of Bindeshwar Prasad Mandal, which made more than 40 recommendations for the welfare of OBCs in its report and to know the real population of OBCs, suggested to conduct caste census in the next ten years census. The Mandal Commission gave its report on the basis of the 1931 census, which was the last caste census data. In the 1931 census, the OBC population was stated to be 52 percent.

Only one of the recommendations of the Mandal Commission, 27 percent reservation for OBCs in government jobs, was announced to be implemented in 1990. After the announcement, the matter went to the court and after getting permission from the court in 1992, 27 percent reservation for OBCs was implemented in government jobs.

The next census after 1992 was to be held in 2001. It was the United Front government in 1998 that prepared the cabinet note 2011/12/1997-BCC and decided to add caste column in the 2001 census but after the fall of the United Front government in March, 1998, the government was formed under the leadership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, whose Home Minister LK Advani rejected the proposal of caste census, as a result of which the caste census could not be done in 2001.

In 2004, the Congress-led UPA government was formed, and in 2006, the Congress, announcing social justice with OBCs, implemented another recommendation of the Mandal Commission for OBCs - “27 percent reservation for OBCs in admission to central educational institutions.”

The next census was to be done in 2011. In 2010, the then UPA Chairperson Smt. Sonia Gandhi formed a committee under the leadership of Shri Pranab Mukherjee to study the need for caste census and the committee confirmed the need for caste census for policy formulation, based on which the Congress government got caste census done. The said census was named “Social, Economic and Caste Census” (SECC) and about 4900 crore rupees were spent in this census.

After the BJP government came to power in 2014, in 2015, then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley promised to make public the data of the “Socio-Economic and Caste Census”, but no action was taken even on that. The then Home Minister Rajnath Singh had promised to conduct a caste census in the upcoming census after participating in a meeting on the subject of the upcoming census in 2018, but the current Home Ministry refused to conduct a caste census in the decennial census of 2021. The National Commission for Backward Classes has also recommended the Government of India to conduct caste census, but the Central Government is also rejecting the recommendation of the National Commission for Other Backward Classes.

Now let’s talk about the title of this article:

“Caste Census and Congress”

Recently, in an election meeting held in Kolar, Karnataka, Shri Rahul Gandhi said, “Let’s talk about OBCs today. We know that if we see the secretaries in the Government of India, only 7 percent come from the Dalit, Tribal and OBC classes. The biggest question is how many OBCs are there in India? If we talk about distribution of funds, about participation in power, then first of all the population of the particular section should be known. The Congress government of UPA-2 conducted caste census in 2011, the information about the castes of the whole country is there in it. Modiji, you talk about OBCs, then make those figures public so that it can be known how many OBCs are there in the country? If everyone has to be involved in the progress of this country, then their number needs to be known? Only then will it be possible to achieve “Jitni aabaadi, utna haq.”

The decision to give minimum 50 percent representation to OBC-ST-SC-minorities in the Congress organization in the ‘Chintan Shivir’ organized in Udaipur, Rajasthan and the ‘National Convention’ of Congress held at Raipur, Chhattisgarh, is the result of the thinking of social justice of Shri Rahul Gandhi and National President Shri Mallikarjun Kharge; which is a commendable step.

Congress National President Shri Mallikarjun Kharge wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the issue of caste-based census. Shri Kharge said in the letter, “The regular decennial census was to be done in 2021, but it has not been done. We demand that this be done immediately and a comprehensive caste census be made an integral part of it. I suspect that in the absence of caste census, the data for social justice programmes is incomplete.”

Even today, an OBC does not know its population, so now the time has come to stand in favour of caste census. When we see the people working on the post of secretaries who run the country, ST-SC-OBC are only 7 percent, why? In the Indian Judiciary, be it the Vice Chancellor of the University or the Professor, the representation of OBCs is negligible. Why? Now the OBC people of this country should stand with those social organizations and political parties of their respective regions who are in favour of the caste census and get “Jitni aabaadi, utna haq.”

(The writer is the Convener of OBC Adhikar Manch)