Census Asks 40 Questions. Why Number 10 Is A Battleground | NDTV Explains

Of the 40 questions asked of every Indian in Census 2027, number 10 sits at the intersection of the country's history and its politics. And it will all come down to the math. Question 10 asks for a person's caste, the first time since 1931 that the census will record it for every Indian. How that question is asked has now become a dispute.

It is a political issue that will need a technical solution as well. And that solution will determine if the numbers can be used at all, for further decisions on reservation and other social justice measures.

But before we get to how Question 10 may be settled, let's break it down across formats and decades.

The Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India notified the questions on August 14, as a second phase of the census. Number 10 on this household data collection form is 'Scheduled Caste (SC)/Scheduled Tribe (ST)/Caste'.

Say, you are the one being counted. If you are neither SC nor ST, the caste field is an open column that the person being counted shall respond to. The enumerators, mostly teachers on census duty, will record the caste name as you declare it in the apps being used for the "first fully digital census". SCs and STs have been counted all along as that's enshrined in the Constitution, but not all castes. Estimates have so far provided for reservation and other benefits for groups identified as Other Backward Classes (OBCs).

The 40 questions do not use the term "backward class" or "OBC" at any point.

That is one of the contentions made to Prime Minister Narendra Modi by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and Leader of the Opposition (Lok Sabha) Rahul Gandhi in their latest letter, released on August 25, asking that the questionnaire be rebuilt using a pre-verified list of castes and wider discussion.

The second phase of Census 2027 is to gather demographic data.

An obvious issue is that the same caste is known by different words across regions; so if each response is recorded as spoken across languages and dialects, one community may be scattered across many entries.

There is, then, the objection to the absence of a dedicated "OBC" column as a dropdown option or menu item. This way, no clear number of the OBC population may be arrived at, argue Opposition parties. OBCs have been a central cog in Indian politics over the past four decades at least.

The BJP-led NDA government has not responded to the objection as such, though it has in the past backed having a dropdown instead of a simple fill-in-the-blank option for counting castes.

A response came from Uttar Pradesh, which goes to the polls in about six months, where Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya said the Congress had never conducted a caste census in its decades in power, and that the Modi government's doing so for the first time "has caused panic and consternation among the Congress and its allied parties".

Caste was counted in every census from 1881 to 1931, under the British colonial government. The 1941 census collected the data but never released it; its tabulation was disrupted by World War 2, and then the British left in 1947.

A break came with the first census of independent India in 1951, when the Congress government dropped caste from the schedule, retaining only SC and ST, the categories required to be counted for reserved seats in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies. Leaders such as Vallabhbhai Patel as home minister and Jawaharlal Nehru as PM reportedly held that a caste count would prove divisive in a country that needed unity.

In 1961, the Centre asked states to conduct their own surveys and draw up state-specific OBC lists if they wished. The Centre has its own list for welfare schemes.