The row over the abrupt turnaround and announcement of the Caste Enumeration decision, as part of the upcoming National Census, was only to be expected. Clearly, and openly, the Congress party and its leader Rahul Gandhi have been airing this demand in recent times. The NDA dispensation led by Narendra Modi had gone on record in Parliament some time ago to say the government did not intend to do a caste survey. Modi went around the states to say that unlike in the conventional sense, he regarded farmers, youths, women etc as ‘castes’ in the modern sense and would rather work for their uplift. In a way, such compartmentalization for governmental favours is in bad taste. India is not a just society. Large segments of the population remain where they are in the past several decades, despite the offer of reservations to disadvantaged sections like the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, which were later extended in some fields to backward classes too. In a real sense, these had only marginal effects as most of those who were born in these communities never ever got a fair deal from the establishment. India’s governance system remains overwhelmingly concentrated in the hands of elites. It’s here that the relevance of a caste enumeration or census comes into play. It would, among other things, give statistics on their population strengths and which all segments among them gained or failed to progress.
A caste census by itself is no panacea for the ills plaguing India’s disadvantaged army of underlings, who are mostly and pitiably voiceless. For instance, the representatives of the SCs and STs, elected to legislatures and parliament or even to local bodies thanks to the reservation system, hardly get their voices heard in these august institutions by virtue of the ‘elitist’ mindset of the others around them. The SC-STs should thank Babasaheb Ambedkar and the accommodative nature of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru to have included “provisions for inclusiveness” in the Indian Constitution. Yet, they remain at the margins. Empowerment is nothing more than lip-service by politicians to get their votes. The Congress party itself does not have the moral authority to claim credit for the present decision by the Modi government for a caste survey. No Congress government ever did this. The last caste survey was done by the British Raj a hundred years ago. Caste, in the Indian context, is inseparable from life; and more so in the Hindu society that forms around 80 per cent of the population. The buck should not stop with a simple caste census. Feelings are strong that Modi is fooling around with the SC-ST-BC populations to win upcoming assembly polls and not allow the Congress to steal the wind over the BJP. This is quite possible. The Congress has rightly demanded a time-line for follow-up actions after the census-taking, to rectify the wrongs. This is important, no doubt but anything done for political optics is suspect.
