Plus, two other notes on counting Indians.
Rohan Venkat
Mar 2
Thank you
for reading India Inside Out.
If you
missed it last month, I
interviewed Atul Mishra, associate professor at Shiv Nadar University on
his book The Sovereign Lives of India and Pakistan: Post-Partition Statehood
in South Asia, on the sovereignty trap between India and Pakistan, what
it’s like to study and teach international relations in India, and much more.
The
interview is full of fascinating ideas, some of which I pulled out for you in
this thread:
In this
edition, we have three notes on the question of counting Indians – and who
counts.
Count Down
When will
India count its people?
According
to World Population Review’s projections, India has already surpassed China as
the most populous nation on earth, playing host to a staggering 1.417 billion
people. That’s 217 million more people than the country was believed to have
back in 2011, according to its census. In other words, in a little over a
decade, India has added the entire population of Brazil – the world’s 7th
largest country – to its rolls.
But the
Indian state doesn’t know where these people are. Or where they work, how many
people are in the household, whether they have migrated, what their income
levels are and even things like what
material their house is made of, what the main source of lighting in the
house is and what fuel is used for cooking.
That’s
because after running uninterrupted every 10 years since 1881 – including a
curtailed version amid World War II in 1941 – the Indian census has taken a
break. And we don’t know when it will be back.
Here is
the Indian Express, in
January:
“The Census enumeration scheduled to take place in
2021 has been further pushed to 2024-25 until further orders. In a letter sent
to all states and Union Territories last month, the office of the Registrar
General of India (RGI) has extended the deadline of freezing of administrative
boundaries to June 30, 2023.
Since the Census enumeration can only begin a few
months after administrative boundaries are frozen and as general elections are
scheduled early next year, the possibility of a Census in 2023 is ruled out… In
the letter, the RGI has cited Covid-19 as a reason
for extending the deadline. The same reason has been given for multiple such
deadlines since 2020.”
It is
quite clear, to everyone involved, that the pandemic is not really a credible
explanation for the census being on hold. Countries as varied as Brazil and
Bangladesh have carried out a census over the last few years, while Indian
authorities have successfully conducted other large-scale exercises – most
notably state and local elections.
So what
explains this delay? Because the official reasoning appears to be an
obfuscation, a number of other possibilities have also been considered.
Shoaib
Daniyal explains the
all-important context of the government promising, back in 2019, to carry
out a country-wide exercise to identify which Indians were genuine citizens.
The process was couched by ruling Bharatiya Janata Party leaders in terms that
clearly suggested it could be used
to harass Indian Muslims:
“In 2019, the Bharatiya Janata Party pushed hard on
the threat to carry
out a citizenship test aimed at Muslims. The panic this caused led to
massive protests against attempts to weaponise citizenship law to target
India’s minority citizens. As Scroll.in had first
reported in 2019, the first step to carrying out an National Register of
Citizens lay in an exercise called the National Population Register. While the
National Population Register was not connected to the census, the enumeration
for both were to be carried out together.
The population register and the citizens register
had been linked to the census to make the former easier to carry out. But
eventually, the connection ended up dealing a body blow to the census itself.
The fact that India could not conduct a census for the first time in a century
and half is an indicator of the depth of the the panic about the National
Register of Citizens.”
Widespread
protests against a potential NRC – which only ended when
pandemic provisions came into force – had prompted the government to step
back from its more incendiary language, and insist that there was no plan to
conduct it at the time. But the threat of one alone led to deep suspicions
about any large-scale enumeration exercise, and occasional statements from BJP
leaders calling
for an
NRC meant that those fears remain alive.
Since the
government still plans to update
the National
Population Register alongside the census, whenever it is conducted, any
move to start the process will inevitably bring back questions about the NRC.
Could the government have been avoiding a politically and socially risky
process in the year that India holds the presidency of the G20, and ahead of
the 2024 elections? It seems likely that this was at least part of the
calculation.
How does
the lack of a census actually affect Indians? Many government programmes, from
pensions for the elderly to housing schemes, depend on census data to target
beneficiaries. Without more recent numbers, the government is forced to use
data from 2011 – potentially excluding millions of people who would otherwise
benefit.
A case in
point is the National Food Security Act, which provides free food rations to
75% of rural and 50% of urban households. This security net currently covers
810 million people. But that number relies on clearly outdated 2011 census
data. According to estimates by economists Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, the
NFSA is excluding
as many as 100 million potential beneficiaries because of this delay.
The
census also forms the basis for a number of other sample surveys that the
government carries out, and provides a picture of everything from the success
or failure of state programmes to the distribution of migrants – a crucial
question given the upheaval of the Covid years.
Pramit
Bhattacharya writes:
“One reason for this state of affairs is the unique
institutional structure governing census operations. The Registrar General of
India (RGI), who heads census operations, tends to be a generalist bureaucrat
reporting to the home ministry. The ministry of statistics and programme
implementation (Mospi) has very little role in the census operations. In
contrast, in almost all G20 economies, it is the respective national
statistical office that handles census operations. In most of them, there are
well-institutionalized mechanisms to insulate statistical offices from the
politics of the day…
Unless the census is insulated from day-to-day
politics, the integrity of its data will be compromised. This holds true for
other parts of the statistical system as well. The world’s largest democracy
deserves clean and honest data. It has a lot to learn from peer countries in
this regard.”
Under count?
Another
theory for why the government is holding off on the census is the question of
counting people by their caste.
Understanding
the demands for a national ‘caste census’ requires a potted history of Indian
identity and social justice politics over
the last half century (and a fair bit of jargon and plenty of short-forms,
please brace yourselves).
At its birth, independent India recognised the need for affirmative action to
support the most historically oppressed groups, officially known as the
Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (also referred to as Dalits and Adivasis).
As a result, India introduced quotas for recruitment to government jobs and
educational institutions, broadly in proportion with the share of SCs and STs
in the Indian population.
In 1980,
the government-appointed Mandal Commission recommended a massive expansion in
affirmative action, calling for reservations to be provided to ‘Other Backward
Classes’ – a large collection of communities and caste groupings sitting
between the most-backward SCs & STs and the upper castes, based on findings
that they were ‘socially or educationally backward.’
Now, the
last time an Indian census asked people about their caste affiliation was back
in 1931, when it was still under British rule. The practice was abandoned
thereafter. But that census gave us an estimate for the proportion of ‘OBCs’ in
India’s population: 52%. The Mandal Commission, relying on this figure (from
nearly half a century earlier), argued that reservations for these communities
ought to be fixed in proportion with their share of the population.
However,
the Supreme Court, over a number of judgments, had established an upper limit
for reservations based on the idea that this ‘extreme form of protective
measure should only apply to a minority of posts’: 50%. This meant that quotas
could not cover more than half of all the posts that the government would
recruit for – with the other half being open to all.
Given
this constraint, the Commission recommended a 27% quota for OBCs, “even though
their population is nearly
twice this figure.” Why 27%? Because quotas for SCs and STs already stood
at 22.5%, and the total had to remain under 50%.
It would
take another decade for this 27% reservation to actually become a reality, in
1990, amidst widespread protests against the quota. In the meantime, the BJP
– uncomfortable with the social justice plank of the reservation movement
– sought to build a united Hindu coalition through a heavy emphasis on othering
Muslims, as exemplified by the Ram Janmabhoomi campaign. This became known as
‘Kamandal politics’ (a reference to a water pot traditionally carried by Hindu
religious figures) in contrast with the ‘pro-reservation’
Mandal approach.
When the
OBC quota was finally put in place in the 1990, it led to the rise of a number
of dominant OBC parties in North India, with ‘Mandal
vs Kamandal' dominating the politics of the decade.
Today the
question of OBC reservations is no longer controversial, a fact best
exemplified by the demands of forward-caste groups – once at the forefront of
anti-reservation politics – now asking for their own quotas. But there are
plenty of issues bubbling under the surface.
One way
to explain the rise of Narendra Modi’s BJP to pole position in Indian politics
over the last decade is its courting
of non-dominant OBC communities, building on the sense that the gains of
the OBC quotas have gone largely to the dominant castes within that category,
like the Yadavs and Jats. Relying on a blend of welfare politics and hardline
Hindutva, the BJP has sought to appeal to the non-dominant OBC groups without
alienating its
upper-caste votebank.
In an
effort to do this, ahead of Modi’s first re-election campaign, the government
turned to the same policy weapon that had once inspired fierce protests from
upper-caste communities – reservations. In 2019, months before the general
elections, the government announced a 10% upper-caste quota. It was officially
branded an ‘Economically Weaker Section’ reservation. But that descriptor
obscured the fact that it only applied to the economically weaker members of
the upper castes, leaving out those who are already covered by other quotas –
i.e. OBCs, SCs and STs.
This 10%
quota broke the Supreme Court’s 50% barrier, taking total reserved spots to 60%
of government recruitment. And in November 2022, the Supreme Court upheld
the validity of the EWS quota, despite its breaching of that barrier.
With no
hard 50% threshold – though this point will still be argued – activists in
favour of social justice have asked: Why can’t OBC reservations be proportional
to their share of the wider population? Why should it be restricted to 27%?
And this
is how, following that long detour into the past, we come to demands for a
caste enumeration to take place alongside the census.
Earlier
this year, from Bihar:
“The Nitish Kumar-led Mahagathbandhan government
set in motion the much-talked-about 'caste census' (actually
a survey) in Bihar on January 6 -- a move seen as capable of changing
the contours of politics, particularly in the Hindi heartland, in the run-up to
the 2024 general elections.
It involves door-to-door surveys and will
cover 12.70 crore people divided among 204 castes across 38 districts of the
state. The exercise is going to be carried out in two phases -- the first
from January to April involving the counting of the households and the
second from April to May 31 where information on the caste, skill, income and
religion of the individuals will be collected -- and is estimated to cost Rs
500 crore. The government will make the survey report public in June.”
The
expectation from most quarters is that this survey will reveal that OBC numbers
are well over the 50% mark, putting wind in the sails of those who demand that
reservations for these communities should not be limited to just 27%. For the
BJP’s opponents, this is also an opportunity to use social justice as a way to
take on the broad Hindu coalition built under Modi – a retread of Mandal vs
Kamandal.
But it is
a tactic fraught with complications. Counting castes and sub-castes (which the
Bihar survey will not do) is a complex matter, one that is very difficult to
carry out and properly tabulate. The previous government conducted a
Socio-Economic Caste Census in 2011 but the data from this exercise has never
been made public, with the current government claiming the findings were shoddy
and unusable. As a result, in 2021 it told the Supreme Court that a caste
census was ‘unfeasible.’
Other
efforts to use this issue to gain political mileage have also been complicated.
A BJP government-appointed commission to ‘sub-categorise’ OBCs – so as to
more equitably distribute reservations within this large category – has
been given extension
after extension since it was constituted in 2017, with no final report in
sight.
Still,
with the Bihar government under Nitish Kumar biting the bullet on a caste
census, the issue is likely to continue growing. The Congress has made the
demand for a national caste census an official
part of the party’s platform ahead of elections next year. The Samajwadi
Party in February began a campaign in Uttar Pradesh for the process to be
replicated in the state.
The BJP
has struggled to form a response. UP Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya
– one of the BJP’s most senior OBC faces – has both said he is “all
for it” and, at the same time, that it is a “mere
pretense” being raised by Opposition parties.
Indeed,
the BJP – which has after all built its current dominance by building an
OBC coalition – may not necessarily opposed to such a move. But the
party’s ideology has traditionally been wary of reservations and caste-based
mobilisation, seeing them as tools to divide the Hindu coalition. Moreover,
there is the clear sense that the party fears it will be unable to control all
the political forces that might be unleashed by a caste census, and might want
to put in more groundwork ahead of any such move.
Recent
political developments around questions of caste indicate a desire from the
Hindutva camp to put a lid on caste-based mobilisation. Take note, for example
of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat saying recently that there
is no caste superiority and that “what some pandits say on the basis of
shaastras is a lie”. (The RSS sought later to explain that his use of the term
‘pandits’ here refers
to ‘intellectuals’, and not Brahmins). The Samajwadi Party’s approach to
the Ramacharitmanas
controversy is also an indicator of political calculations around this
issue.
That
said, the BJP’s discomfort with the idea of an OBC census does not mean it is a
slam-dunk political issue for the Opposition to embrace either. Roshan
Kishore writes:
“The first [question] is whether a demand for
conducting the caste census (and raising the quota for OBC reservations) will
have the same kind of traction which was there three decades ago when Mandal
was first implemented…
The second is whether the BJP will oppose such a demand at all…. The BJP’s
tactics of being non-committal on the caste census – perhaps one of the reasons
it has even put the decadal census on hold – might just be the proverbial act
of kicking the can down the road. In fact, the BJP might want to further
complicate the discourse by arguing that even if the OBC quota were to be
increased, it should be done in keeping with reserving a bigger pie for non-dominant
OBCs, which is what the Rohini Commission will most likely recommend…
The third, and this is the most difficult to
predict, question is whether the caste census data will throw some unexpected
results which could trigger unexpected political realignment. What if a caste
census, which also looks at economic attributes of various caste groups, shows
that intra-caste inequality – a small section being economically well-off and
the rest being below a threshold which is a bare minimum for being called
prosperous – is a bigger phenomenon than inter-caste inequality at least for
OBCs and so-called upper castes. That SCs continue to lag on economic
indicators is a widely accepted statistical reality. While the idea might seem
politically inconvenient to many people, it is not entirely untenable. If the
census were to throw such numbers, there will be a stronger case for not taking
caste as the be-all and end-all of economic inequality in India as far as mass
politics is concerned.”
The
census and a caste census aren’t necessarily connected. The BJP-led government
– if it is re-elected – may very well conduct the regular census in 2024-25
without enumerating by caste, as has been the case for the last nine decades.
But the
unexpected delay in carrying out the count at least suggests that the party is
contemplating something more than the usual statistical exercise, or worried
that questions around the NPR and the caste census could upset its plans to
control the narrative in the G20 year and ahead of elections in 2024.
Read also:
Who counts?
A small
final note on another bit of ‘counting’ that could alter India’s electoral
politics. In January, the Election Commission of India had plans to demonstrate
a new Remote Electronic Voting Machine, which would allow domestic migrants to
vote in elections ‘back home.’
Although
it is possible for migrants to register as voters in their new places of
residence, it is believed that issues of access and documentation – as well as
the phenomenon of cyclical migration – means tens of millions of migrants are
prevented from exercising their franchise every election, local, state and
national. (I did an interview with two scholars looking into the question of the
political exclusion of migrants, back in 2021).
And so,
the Election Commission announced that it had developed a potential solution: A
voting machine that could allow you to pick which constituency you want to vote
for, even if you are far from home. Unfortunately, the EC appeared to only
focus on the technical side of the problem – without addressing the various
attendant concerns, such as who would count as a migrant, how would polling
agents (representatives of various parties generally present at voting booths)
be included, how the ‘model code of conduct’ would be implemented outside of
states where elections were to take place and so on.
As a
result, all
parties “except the BJP and to an extent the BJD” opposed the proposal,
forcing the to EC put off the demonstration of its prototype remote voting
machine.
Solving the
migrant voting problem is seen as a way to address the stagnation in Indian
election turnouts around the two-thirds mark – and enfranchise tens of
millions who have been unable to vote. Yet, many argue, that the Election
Commission has not carefully considered either the process that remote voting
would require nor the implications of altering the way Indians can vote.
Nachiket
Deuskar explains why the proposal has
alarmed Opposition parties:
“Congress leader Digvijaya Singh said
on January 15 that most opposition parties had unanimously decided to oppose
the proposal as it is still “sketchy”. “There are political anomalies and
problems in the proposal,” Singh said. “The definition of migrant labour, the
number of migrant labour is all not very clear.”
…
Apart from technical issues, the Opposition believe
that the move would place them on an unequal footing in relation to the much
larger, richer BJP…
A Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam member said the
proposed method of conducting remote voting would hurt regional parties.
“Nominees from political parties posted at every booth act as watchdogs
guarding against any violations,” The Hindu quoted
the unidentified party member as saying. “Allowing [remote] polls across the
country will deny opportunity to regional parties to send in their nominees to
booths.”
Nevertheless,
the Election Commission has set the ball rolling and, given the aims of the
effort – allowing more migrants to vote – and, arguably, the potential
gains it would provide the BJP, it is likely that we will hear more about
remote voting soon. Jagdeep Chhokar has even argued that this will be a way to open
up voting for non-resident Indians, another complex question of franchise
that is seen as overlapping with the BJP’s interests, making it more likely to
move forward.
It’s
quite likely that we will be returning to all of these themes – the
census, counting castes and remote voting – in future editions of the
newsletter.
Can’t make this up
You’ll
have to ask someone who speaks Hindi to explain this one. (Click through to see
the original add in the replies).
Thanks for reading India Inside Out. Over the next
few weeks, expect lots of links and a new interview series. Please send
feedback, complaints about the pieces being too long, and funny memes to
rohan.venkat@gmail.com.
Source: https://rohanvenkat.substack.com/p/india-inside-out-why-is-india-seeing
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