What can a caste census tell us? | Number Theory

While it will provide a lot of information which was not available earlier, the broad contours of India’s caste composition are not exactly unknown

Updated on: May 2, 2025, 11:16:20 IST

By Roshan Kishore, Abhishek Jha

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

The next census will also enumerate caste data, as per a decision by the Union Cabinet on April 30. The last time the census did a caste count was in 1931. What exactly can a new caste census tell us? While it will provide a lot of information which was not available earlier, the broad contours of India’s caste composition are not exactly unknown. Here are four charts which explain this.

An enumeratorcollects information for a caste-based census in Bihar. (PTI)

What can a caste census tell us?

The census does give a count of SC-ST population
While the census stopped counting all castes after independence, it did count persons belonging to Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) both at the aggregate and disaggregate (sub-caste) level. According to the 2011 census (latest data), SCs and STs had a share of 16.6% and 8.6% in India’s population, which means that almost three-fourth of India’s population was either OBC or non-SC-ST-OBC. To be sure, there do exist official estimates of the OBC and non-SC-ST-OBC population in the country as well. These are found in various official surveys such as the National Family and Health Surveys (NFHS) or those conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO). While these surveys show some variation in the social composition of the population across various rounds, they do give us an estimate of the share of OBCs and non-SC-ST-OBC in the population. These numbers are around 45% for OBCs and just over 25% for non-SC-ST-OBC groups.
But population shares show a large variation across states
Once again, this is something which is known for the SC-ST population in the country from the census data. For example, a state like Punjab had a 32% share for SCs, while four north-eastern states have more than 67% STs in their population. Survey-based estimates suggest that even the OBC population shows a large variation across states. This number is as high as three-fourth in states such as Tamil Nadu and just about one-fifth in states such as Punjab and West Bengal.
The religion-wise dynamic among OBCs
There is a religious angle as well to the caste census debate. Only Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists contribute to the pool of SCs in India, and whether or not Muslims and Christians can be recognised as SCs is currently before the courts. However, all religious groups are allowed OBC recognition in the country. A break-up of the OBC population by religion from NSSO surveys shows that the share of OBCs is the highest among Muslim population in the country. Share of OBCs among Hindus is close to the national average, as expected from the group’s overwhelming share in the total population.
How credible are survey-based estimates of caste-composition of population in India?
This is perhaps the most important question, apart from the share of various sub-castes in the different caste categories, which a caste census will be able to answer. One way to answer this question is to compare the results of the Bihar caste survey – it is the only state-wise caste survey for which granular data was released – with the estimates from NSSO surveys. The comparison shows that the divergence was much smaller for OBC and non-SC-ST-OBC population than for the SC population. To be sure, the share of SCs estimated in the Bihar caste survey is much closer to the 2011 census numbers than the NSSO numbers. One reason for more noise in NSSO data could be that the sampling frames themselves have become obsolete with no new census data to update them.
Why caste census?
The short point is that a caste census’s broad numbers on the social composition of India’s population may not be something very surprising. However, it will offer the most robust data on caste composition of India in the last hundred years. If the census comes with demographic data at the sub-caste level, it will add a whole new layer to the existing knowledge on social demographics of the country.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Roshan Kishore
Roshan Kishore is the Data and Political Economy Editor at Hindustan Times. He heads the newsroom's data journalism team, which produces Number Theory, a daily data-driven feature for the print edition and the HT app. Number Theory uses data analysis and story-telling based on it to add value to the newsroom’s daily coverage by putting stories in a larger context on a range of issues, including politics, macroeconomy, markets, global affairs and climate. Under his leadership HT’s data journalism work has established itself as a niche product in Indian journalism and pushed the boundaries of marrying academic rigour with news sense and speed. Along with writing and editing data stories, he has also been writing a weekly political economy column called Terms of Trade for HT Premium. A trained economist with an MPhil degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Kishore has also been a visiting fellow at the Centre for Advanced Studies of India (CASI) at the University of Pennsylvania. Along with his journalistic work, his writings have also appeared in journals such as the Economic and Political Weekly and working papers for CASI and UNESCAP.Read More
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Abhishek Jha
Abhishek Jha is Assistant Editor-Data at Hindustan Times. He uses statistical programming to generate newsworthy insights from large datasets. He is part of the team that produces Number Theory, a daily data story feature of the paper’s print edition. Since March 2024, he has been writing Weather Bee, a weekly column for the Hindustan Times website. He is a chemical engineer by training, who specialises in stories related to weather, climate, and the environment. Jha has been at HT since 2018, where he offers data-driven perspective and analysis on politics, environment, weather, climate, economy and society. His work includes data coverage of elections in India and abroad, including the 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha elections; the disasters and extreme weather resulting from changing climate, such as floods, droughts, heat waves, cold waves, and dwindling snow cap in the Himalayas; the factors that drive poor air quality in northern India; the changing patterns of land use; the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on labour market conditions; the changing pattern of consumer spending seen in the new consumer spending surveys; and social norms seen in the surveys such as the National Family Health Survey.Read More