New Delhi, Aug 25 — Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge and Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi have written a joint letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, cautioning that the proposed 'open-ended' format of collecting caste data in the census could result in the same caste being recorded under different names, thereby making the data inaccurate, and instead urged for a "drop-down list of castes" in the form.
Highlighting that social justice policies in India "cannot be effectively formulated without accurate data", the letter stated that a precise assessment of the numerical strength and socio-economic status of various castes is possible only if the caste enumeration is conducted correctly.
"Your government has opted for an "open-ended" question format to record caste details during the census, an approach that is misleading. Under this method, whatever name an individual provides for their caste will be recorded as it is," Kharge and LoP Gandhi said.
Observing that the same caste is often known by different names, sub-castes, and linguistic variations across different regions of the country, they cautioned that if members of the same caste are recorded under different names, "a single caste could end up being fragmented into thousands of distinct entries".
"This would result in the emergence of hundreds of thousands of caste names, rendering the entire dataset obtained from the caste census useless," the Congress leaders flagged.
They further cautioned that if the accurate population count of a community is not recorded, "any assessment of its status will inevitably be flawed".
"This will disadvantage backward, extremely backward, and other marginalised communities, and will also impact decisions regarding education, employment, welfare schemes, and social justice. Most importantly, this method will fail to reveal the actual size of the OBC population in India, as the very term 'Backward Class' is not included in this census," the letter mentioned.
Providing a "solution" to the alleged discrepancy, the Congress leaders said that a "drop-down list of castes" should be created.
"This is the method used for enumerating Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Such a list can easily be compiled based on existing government lists -- such as those for Socially and Educationally Backward Classes -- and data from the Anthropological Survey of India," they said while noting that the same approach was adopted in the caste surveys conducted in Telangana and Bihar.
Moreover, they attached the caste lists from both the mentioned surveys to the letter, for reference,
Kharge and Gandhi further stated: "We do not accept the caste census being conducted in this manner. The government should scrap the current questionnaire and draft a new one after consulting political parties, experts, and the public."
The Congress party said that this would ensure that the true numbers for every caste and community are revealed, making the caste census accurate, meaningful, and beneficial.