Why is Bihar going to conduct its own caste-based census?

Bihar will soon conduct a caste-based census in the state, chief minister Nitish Kumar announced on Wednesday (June 1). The decision was taken at an all-party meeting chaired by the CM.

The exercise would be called Jaati Aadharit Ganana. The decision to go ahead with this was unanimously taken by all the political parties present at the meeting, including the BJP.

The government will undertake a “socio-economic survey of all castes and communities” in the state, the CM said.

He also said that the decision didn't face any opposition and 'all parties unanimously supported' the proposed move, reported PTI.

We take a look at why the Bihar government is going to conduct its own caste-based census and why it is important.

WHAT IS A CASTE CENSUS?

• A caste-based census means that the census exercise would not just include religion of a person but also have a caste-wise tabulation. It would help in knowing the population under different castes. Usually the census is conducted by the central government every ten years. But now the Bihar government has decided to conduct its own census.

• The last caste census data gathered and published was in 1931. After Independence, every census since 1951 published caste data of only the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, not the Other Backward Class (OBCs) which is over half the India's population.

• The census that the Bihar government is planning to conduct will be the first such exercise where population of the OBCs will have a separate tabulation.

WHY IS IT NEEDED?

• Even though OBCs get reservation in government jobs and schemes, all other castes other than the SCs and STs are marked under the General category during the census. This means that there is no documented data on OBC population in India. And because OBCs are marked under the General category in the census, we don't have the real data of the people belonging to the General category either.

• Quota for SCs is 15 per cent and the STs is 7.5 per cent, and it is based on caste and tribal identities. The highest reservation mandate is for the OBCs at 27 per cent. But there is no data on what the population of OBCs is.
• OBC quota was fixed at 27 per cent as it was the available space to keep the reservation cap at 50 per cent. The Mandal Commission had estimated the OBC population at 52 per cent.

WHY THE CENTRE IS NOT CONDUCTING CASTE CENSUS?

• In an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court last year, the central government said that it won't be conducting a Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC), stating that a caste census was unfeasible, “administratively difficult and cumbersome”, reported India Today. The affidavit was filed in response to a writ petition by the Maharashtra government.
• The Centre also said that including OBC/BCC data in the 2021 data would be tantamount to interfering with a policy decision as framed under Section 8 of the SC-ST Act. 'Unlike the mandate for collection of Census data for SCs and STs, there is no such constitutional mandate for the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India to provide the census figures of OBCs/BCCs', the affidavit said.