India sets date of population and caste census

NEW DELHI (AFP): The world’s most populous nation India will conduct a census in 2027, its first since 2011, the government said Wednesday, which will also count caste — a controversial accounting not done since the country’s independence.

“It has been decided to conduct Population Census-2027 in two phases along with enumeration of castes,” the Ministry of Home Affairs said in a statement.

Most of the vast nation will take part in the census on March 1, 2027, but for the high-altitude Himalayan regions, the counting will take place earlier before snow sets in — on October 1, 2026.

Those areas include the states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, as well as in Ladakh, and the contested region of Jammu and Kashmir.

Caste remains a crucial determinant of one’s station in life in India, with a rigid societal chasm dividing those of higher castes — the beneficiaries of ingrained cultural privileges — from people of lower castes, who suffer entrenched discrimination.

More than two-thirds of India’s 1.4 billion people are estimated to be on the lower rungs of a millennia-old social hierarchy that divides Hindus by function and social standing.

The decision to include detailed caste data as part of the next census — originally due in 2021 — was approved by a government meeting headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in May.

Caste data was last collected as part of the official census exercise in 1931, during British colonial rule that ended with Indian independence 16 years later.

Successive governments have since resisted updating the sensitive demographic data, citing administrative complexity and fears of social unrest.

A caste survey was conducted in 2011 but its results were never made public because they were purportedly inaccurate.

That survey was separate from the 2011 general census, the last time India collected demographic data.