Opinion | The numbers game behind caste census

The recent announcement that the Government of India plans to collect data of Other Backward Classes put me in two minds. My first reaction was knee-jerk contending that this would only reinforce casteism. But my second response was more reflective. As a sociology student I often get nostalgic not so much about society but about the sociologists who taught me.

My teachers had a sense of wisdom, a sense of gossip and irony, I recollect in particular the political scientist Rajni Kothari. There would be intense conversations during lunch about caste, violence, democracy.

The conversations argued that the study of caste tells one as much about the scholar as about the subject. Second, the gossip of caste and its ritual and political logic was better understood by ethnologists than by the great surveys. Third, number and classification rather than being neutral told us more about the way people look at governance. Information one realised was power and information about caste told you how the powerful looked at caste.

There was an irony to the study of caste. Its protean nature eluded the scholar and tended to quietly alter the ruling logic of regimes. Caste tells you there is little difference between the technocrat and the orientalists, they are brothers under the skin. Both bring a primness and puritanism to the study of caste. Their hostility hides a secret, even morbid fascination for it. There is a final moral. In studies like caste the tail wags the dog. I remembered all this as I thought about the OBC census.

The facts of the recent report are clear. The Census of 2021 will for the first time collect data on the Other Backward Classes. Ever since the 1931 census, the government has been reluctant to collect caste data during a census. The very spectacle of enumeration, they felt, added to the logic of casteism. There was a coyness to data collection after 1931. For example, the 2011 census collected data separately through the socio-economic caste census (SECC). But oddly the data is yet to be released for methodological difficulties. The entire exercise cost roughly Rs 5,000 crore but because of certain errors the report was muffled into silence.

Number has now become a favourite tool of aspiring politicians. They realise that number can be a simple rallying point, the site of a campaign or public spectacle. A display of political power is often a display of numbers. Politicians realise today that number and the logic of numbers is critical to OBC battles; it gives them a claim to a larger size of the reservation cake. This needs to be backed by classifications. Between numbers and classification, one can rule a county.

Today power groups also seem to think that between numbers and categories they can obtain greater power. Dominant castes like the Jats, Patidars, Marathas, etc. have been asking for a greater share of the cake. They have been using the logic of numbers to enforce their demands. In this context, one has to understand that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government is not being democratic. When it agrees to conduct an OBC census, it is merely succumbing to the populist pressures of politics. But this game does not end so simply.

There is a logic, a tension to enumeration and categorisation. History has taught us that one of the battles fought is between caste and a more secular criteria like class. Economic and educational classification might be a fairer criteria on which to classify backwardness. But politics and caste as categories always undermine these secular exercises distorting how one determines whether a community is backward. One tried a compromise of indicators under the euphemism of social backwardness. The Orwellian message is clear, some OBC’s have to be read as more “unequal” than others, and therefore they can claim a greater share of electoral power.

The battle shifted from that of OBC to a battle between OBC. As the possibility of enumeration and classification became clearer the struggle moved to one between dominant and aspiring OBC. Each groups wanted their own claim to quotas. What was once an electoral domain of the Yadavas and Patels now opened out to the lesser backward caste. Each one now wanted a separate quota as their stake in power.

The government started playing word games as finer distinctions sprouted between the OBCs. An epidemic of sub-categorisation entered in and suddenly one wondered whether our current masters were merely echoing the British dictum of divide and rule. The BJP realised that instead of facing huge caste consolidations one could deal with caste individually. Negotiation and manipulation would be politically easier. The battle of sub-categorisation makes the task of control and governance easier. The government can easily stall agitation appointing a ­­­­spate of committees buying time before the election.

Reading all this one goes back to the wisdom of my teachers. They always said studying caste is problematic because the subject has a life of its own. The very politics of it forces us to look at caste as an autonomous factor. Policy can advise rational criteria but politics will always distort it. Such is the fable of caste and electoral democracy, where privilege and justice often mimic each other.

Shiv Visvanathan is professor, Jindal Global Law School and director, Centre for Study of Knowledge Systems, OP Jindal Global University. The views expressed are personal.