Population & Associated Issues: Caste enumeration and Census 2027

Why is caste being counted now?

Think of a school that gives free books to poor students but has not counted how many poor students it has since 1931. It would either run short or give books to the wrong children. Fresh numbers help the school plan.

Caste enumeration simply means counting how many people belong to each caste.

A short history

• 1881 to 1931: British-era Censuses recorded caste for everyone.
• 1941: caste was collected but the full tables were not published because of the Second World War.
• 1951 onwards: independent India stopped full caste counting. Only Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) were counted, because the Constitution gives them special protections.
• 2011: the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) collected caste details, but the caste data was never officially released.
• 2023: Bihar released its own caste survey on 2 October 2023. It counted 13.07 crore people: Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs) 36.01%, Other Backward Classes (OBCs) 27.12%, SCs 19.65%, STs 1.68% and the unreserved group 15.52%.

States call their exercises “surveys”, because only the Centre can hold a Census under the Census Act, 1948. Census is Entry 69 of the Union List, which means the list of subjects on which only Parliament can make laws.

How Census 2027 works

• Phase I, House Listing and Housing Census: April to September 2026. It records houses, amenities like water and toilets, and assets.
• Phase II, Population Enumeration: February 2027. Personal details, including caste, are recorded. In Ladakh and snow-bound areas of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, this phase happens in September 2026.
• Reference date: 00:00 hours on 1 March 2027 (1 October 2026 for the snow-bound areas). The reference date is the moment the Census “photographs” the population; everyone is counted as of that time.
• Digital first: enumerators use a mobile app, and people can self-enumerate, which means filling in their own details online before the enumerator visits.
• The question: the Phase II list of 40 items was notified on 14 August 2026. Item 10 is “Scheduled Caste (SC)/Scheduled Tribe (ST)/Caste”.
• Size: about 31 lakh enumerators and supervisors, and a budget of ₹11,718.24 crore.

Why caste data matters

• Reservation: OBC reservation of 27% rests largely on the Mandal Commission’s use of 1931 data. In Indra Sawhney (1992), the Supreme Court capped total reservation at 50% in normal cases. Fresh numbers will add pressure to revisit this.
• Sub-categorisation: the Rohini Commission studied splitting OBCs into sub-groups so that benefits do not go only to a few powerful castes. Caste-wise data makes this easier.
• Welfare targeting: schemes can reach the groups that are actually left behind.
• Delimitation and women’s reservation: redrawing constituencies and starting the one-third reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and Assemblies (106th Amendment, 2023) depend on the first Census after 2026. Census 2027 is that Census.

Concerns

• Classification: people may report thousands of caste names, sub-castes and spellings. Sorting them into lists is hard; this is one reason SECC 2011 caste data stayed unpublished.
• Identity politics: some fear exact numbers may deepen caste divisions and fuel demands to raise reservation beyond 50%.
• Privacy and trust: people must feel safe sharing caste; the Census Act keeps individual answers confidential.
• Accuracy: people may claim a different caste if they think it brings benefits.

Arguments at a glance

What UPSC asks: Census basics (Act, Union List, reference date), the history since 1931, and in Mains whether caste data helps social justice or deepens divisions.