PRASHNAM INSIGHT #40
Caste census is one of the most debated topics currently. Political parties across the spectrum have been requesting the union government to go in for a detailed caste wise census in this census year 2021.
Prashnam decided to ask the common people to get their opinion on this issue.
Prashnam asked the following 2 questions to 7039 people from 10 states namely-
Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, and Uttar Pradesh.
Q1. Should the Union govt release caste census & all other caste information in public?
1. Yes, the Union govt should release all caste information of India publicly.
2. No, the Union govt should not release caste information publicly.
3. I don't know what this issue is about
4. I know about this issue, but I don't have any opinion.
Q2. Which caste category do you belong to?
1. SC/ST
2. OBC
3. Minority
4. General/ Upper Caste
5. I do not want to identify
As we can see in the above table, majority of the respondents across these 10 states want caste census to be made public. Understandably, the percent is highest in the Hindi states like Bihar (56%) and Madhya Pradesh (56%) where the clamour around caste census is growing by the day.
If we see it caste wise, it is evident that SC/STs (67%) want the caste wise census more than anybody else. This may give these groups a chance to see intra-SC/ST breakup of subcastes.
63% of the OBCs want the caste census done. They are the most ‘to be benefited’ by this exercise. Strikingly, 22% of them do not want this to happen.
Minorities are ambivalent on this issue as they do not see any conclusive fallout for them.
General/ Upper castes (54%) are less enthusiastic about it than SC/STs and OBCs.
Read the full report in The Print here.
The raw response data is available here.