The proposed caste census to be conducted under the Census Act will not offer any scope for objections and corrections with regard to the data collected because the law mandates confidentiality on individual details and seeks to penalise officials for non-compliance.

Experts have suggested suitable amendments to the law before undertaking the exercise to facilitate the sharing of data for authentication.

The census process involves collecting, compiling, analysing and disseminating the social, demographic and economic data of the country’s population.

In 2011-12, the UPA government conducted the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC), but not under the Census Act. The economic data of individual households collected were displayed in the gram panchayats, seeking objections from locals. The NDA government released the economic data but not the caste statistics, citing
inaccuracies.

Senior Congress leader and former rural development minister Jairam Ramesh said the data collected under the Census Act could not be published in any public forum.

“The (individual data collected) won’t be put out in the public domain. Whatever data the enumerators will capture, that will be final,” Ramesh said.

Prof. Sunil Ray, an economist and former director of the A.N. Sinha Institute of Social Studies in Patna, said there should be some system for authenticating the data as the census needed to accurately capture the social and economic differentiation as they existed on the ground.

“There should be a system for data purification during the process. Method is the sole and substance of any survey. A robust methodological process is important for getting accurate data. There should be some authentication at the grass-root level by the village sarpanch or some official. Without authentication, there will be a lot of gaps in data collection or misreporting in the field data,” Ray said.

Ray said the government needed to think about this aspect before initiating the process.

“It is not difficult. A few steps can be included without adding to the overall time span of the census. This will make the data less erroneous and more useful,” he said.

Ray said the census collected overall data of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes but not caste-wise data within those categories.

“There is heterogeneity in prosperity. Once the SC data collected at the disaggregated level is aggregated at the macro level, it gives a better picture for planning. We must take care of individual SC castes. The data should be made available at the block level for better planning,” Ray said.

P.C. Mohanan, former acting chairperson of the National Statistical Commission, said verification of caste might be difficult during the conduct of the census.

“Verification of data is not done for religion or SC/ST also. Enumerators can only check that the reported caste and religion match those on the list of castes and religions. It is necessary to have a list of castes beforehand. Otherwise, it becomes operationally difficult to process the data,” Mohanan said.