India’s Delayed Digital Census Reinstates Caste: Power, Data Gaps, and the Future of Governance - FrontlineBookmarksSectionsFeaturesEssentialsPublished : Aug 26, 2026 08:00 IST - 4 MINS READCOMMentsSHAREFrom 1951, when the first census of independent India was held, until 2011, India had never missed this decadal demographic exercise. Then came the COVID-19 pandemic, derailing the 2021 Census. Instead of regrouping quickly, the BJP-led government repeatedly deferred the exercise. Finally, the census was begun this year, six years late and introducing a 16-year gap between two enumerations. This long break has resulted in enormous challenges, with data gaps and ambiguous administrative direction, but mostly by creating an overall fog around population numbers and distribution patterns. While economists, development specialists, and the opposition have repeatedly raised concerns about this nebulous state of affairs, the government has been unfazed, possibly even comfortable, given its known allergy to real statistics. Evidently, accurate demographic data is essential for the distribution of welfare measures such as subsidised food or guaranteed work, to study poverty figures and the impact of alleviation schemes, or to budget for education or infrastructure. Inaccurate figures lead to misallocations but, worse, to under-allocation or omissions.Approaching the census from this angle, of knowing who the people are, what they earn, where they live, how they eat, why they migrate, and so on, is a knowledge proposition; and modern states, as Michel Foucault wrote, govern not only through laws and coercion but also by extracting more and more granular knowledge about the populations they govern. Because knowledge is also power, the census, as indeed all modern forms of surveillance and enumeration, make populations more knowable and in the process more controllable. This is why the historian Benedict Anderson listed the map, the museum, and the census as the key tools of colonial control.Postcolonial governments continued the counting, but it was now subsumed, at least theoretically, by the instinct also of social justice: using data to distribute resources more fairly among all the people and to also understand the people the democracy was serving. Historians, sociologists, and other social scientists saw more than just the data; they saw the dense interplay between the numbers and between society, government, culture, and mores, and how these evolve in relation to each other and to the numbers.Another complexity the census provokes is the idea of “created identities”. The process of enumeration is not one merely of recording but also, as Anderson wrote, of slotting people into racial, religious, and linguistic categories. The British, for instance, labelled entire tribes as “criminal by birth” simply because they were nomadic and could not be monitored or taxed suitably by the colonial administration. Similarly, the fear of discrimination, the inducement of state benefits, or the aspirations for status also resulted, and continues to result, in clans creating brand new identities for themselves. If the colonial census filed people, without their knowledge or understanding, under labels that were easy to administer, people also refashioned their histories to fit into castes or sub-castes that would yield social or material gain.This census comes with two highlights: it is the first fully digital exercise, and it reinstates caste again after 1931. Digitisation has not always been a happy experience in India, and it remains to be seen what fresh horrors the 100 per cent digital census will unleash, either in vitiating the process or garbling the data. As for caste, its listing was discontinued after Independence, but religion was not. In fact, as Ram B. Bhagat has written, in startling contrast to South-East Asia where religious identity gradually disappeared as a primary census classification, all South Asian states consciously chose to continue with religion. One important reason for caste to be removed from the census was because caste identity invariably weakens religious identity. The BJP, having marshalled castes under its Hindutva umbrella, has thus been understandably reluctant to reintroduce it. But Rahul Gandhi’s persistent call for a caste census with the slogan “Jitni abadi, utni haq” (More numbers, more rights) caused panic in the party’s ranks. The scholar Anand Teltumbde expands here upon its subsequent climbdown, but suffice it to say that the BJP hopes the numbers will bequeath it an even more targeted electoral game.Obviously, the census is never politically innocent. The state can use the numbers to give all citizens a fair shot at a good life or exploit the data for authoritarian ends. In an ideal world, as Teltumbde says, the census would always remain subordinate to Ambedkar’s larger vision of the deepening of substantive democracy.CONTRIBUTE YOUR COMMENTSNew Story TitleAuthor NameJuly 17, 2024`; storyList.appendChild(newStoryItem); createDots(); dots = document.querySelectorAll(".dots .dot"); observer.observe(newStoryItem); } function removeStoryItem() { if (storyItems.length > 0) { storyList.removeChild(storyItems[storyItems.length - 1]); createDots(); dots = document.querySelectorAll(".dots .dot"); } }});]]>More stories from this issue+ SEE all StoriesKey Questions & Insights(AIⓘ)1 /Sign in to Unlock member-only benefits!Bookmark stories to read later.Comment on stories to start conversations.Subscribe to our newsletters.Get notified about discounts and offers to our products.${ ind + 1 } ${ device }Last active - ${ la }