Model answer & approach
- Caste remains a vital axis for political mobilisation in India. How would the caste census address the aspirations of people ? Discuss. (Answer in 250 words)
Introduction
Caste organises Indian electoral politics, as Rajni Kothari argued when he wrote that politics is caste-ridden and caste is politicised. A caste census would supply that politics with numbers, which will settle some claims and inflame others.
Body
1. Why caste mobilises: Srinivas's dominant caste, the Rudolphs' horizontal and vertical mobilisation and the second democratic upsurge after Mandal made caste the vehicle by which subordinated groups entered power, in Jaffrelot's silent revolution.
2. The data gap is real: The last full caste enumeration was in 1931, and the caste data of the 2011 Socio-Economic and Caste Census was never released. Bihar's 2023 survey filled the vacuum locally, and caste enumeration is now folded into the 2027 Census.
3. What it can genuinely address: Indra Sawhney requires quantifiable data for backwardness; the Rohini Commission found most OBC quota benefit concentrated in a small fraction of castes but had no base to sub-categorise; the 2024 ruling permitting sub-classification of Scheduled Castes needs the same evidence.
4. The proportionality claim: The demand that rights follow numbers gives large but under-represented communities a measurable grievance and remedy, in ticket distribution and appointments as much as in reservation.
5. The cautions: Nicholas Dirks and Bernard Cohn showed that colonial enumeration hardened caste into a competitive political category. Thousands of jati names resist classification, and numbers by themselves do not displace the fifty per cent ceiling.
Conclusion
A caste census is necessary to make reservation evidence-based rather than customary, and it answers aspirations for recognition and share. It will disappoint if numbers are read as automatic entitlement to quota, since the ceiling and the creamy layer test survive it.
Open this in the study app →