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06/12/20 10:40 AM IST

caste in census

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The Tamil Nadu government has decided to appoint a commission to formulate a methodology to collect caste-wise particulars of its population and use that to come up with a report.

Is collection of caste details part of the census?
  • Caste was among the details collected by enumerators during the decennial Census of India until 1931.
  • It was given up in 1941, a year in which the census operation was partially affected by World War II.
  • In his report on the 1941 exercise, then Census Commissioner of India, M.W.M. Yeatts, indicated that tabulation of caste details separately involved additional costs.
  • “The sanctioned tabulation for British India does not cover caste, but even had the full course been taken, there would have been no all-India caste table.
What was the view after Independence?
  • R.A. Gopalaswami, the first Indian Registrar-General of independent India, said in the 1951 report:
  • “The 1951 census was not [emphasis in the original] to concern itself with questions regarding castes, races and tribes, except insofar as the necessary statistical material related to ‘special groups’ and certain other material relating to backward classes collected and made over to the Backward Classes Commission.”
  • ‘Special Groups’ has been explained as referring to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Anglo-Indians and certain castes treated provisionally as ‘backward’ for the purposes of the census.
  • This implies that BC data were collected, but not compiled or published.
  • While SC/ST details are collected as part of the census, details of other castes are not collected by the enumerators.
  • The main method is by selfdeclaration to the enumerator.
  • So far, backward classes commissions in various States have been conducting their own counts to ascertain the population of backward castes. The methodology may vary from State to State.

Source: The Hindu

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