Accurate caste data can propel progress
Bihar’s headcount of jatis must also collect data on socio-economic aspects, correlating with poverty levels, occupation, and education. This will allow for a much finer geographical calibration of government policy
Sometime in 2017, an unofficial set of excel files was doing the rounds of the journalist-researcher circles in Patna. The files contained an apparent jati-wise breakdown of households for each of Bihar’s 60,000 polling booths. The level of granularity — 59 major jatis, across every polling booth — was astonishing; a cursory check with officials indicated the data was relatively accurate. The last time a comparable dataset had been collected officially was in 1931, under the British Raj, as part of the decennial census. The source of the excel files was a prominent political party.

Five years later, Bihar is about to embark on a physical headcount of the jatis again. By pressing for a caste census of sorts across the state, political parties in Bihar today want what they know to become official public knowledge, underscoring the deeply political nature of these numbers.
The broad contours of what these numbers will show are well known: The backward castes — comprising both Other Backward Castes (OBCs) and Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs) — will likely form about 50% of the population; the Dalits will be seen to comprise a sixth of the population; the upper castes about a fifth, with Muslims shoring up the rest (their castes will also be counted). This will form the basis for historically marginalised caste groups — some OBC jatis and EBCs — to demand greater reservations for themselves. It will come at some cost to the upper castes, which explains some part of the initial hesitation of the central unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party to accept the demand for such a census in the state. The upper castes are likely to see a further decline in their representation in government, continuing a process of democratisation that ostensibly started at Independence but received a huge thrust post-Mandal and during the Lalu Yadav years.
Take, for instance, reservations in panchayats. Currently, a sixth of the seats for elected representatives (panchayat head, ward member, sarpanch) are reserved for Scheduled Castes (SC). This is exactly in line with their population share. On the other hand, about 17% of seats are reserved for EBCs (and none for OBCs). The caste census will likely show that the share of EBCs is closer to 30%. This will allow EBCs — historically discriminated against and not as numerous or land-owning as the more powerful OBC castes — to make legitimate claims for a larger share of reserved positions in their favour. The demand for expanded reservations for EBCs is one that the ruling Janata Dal (United) may only be too happy to fulfill, given that it wants to try and recapture the EBC votes it gained in 2010, but has been losing gradually.
The exercise, however, can be an opportunity for much more than a simple count of jatis. These broad caste groupings, SCs, OBCs, are crude and somewhat arbitrary, lumping together jatis with very different social standings and economic statuses under one heading. This has been long recognised by those in government, including the current Nitish Kumar regime. The EBC group was carved out from within the OBCs for this purpose. Similarly, Mahadalits, a collection of extremely marginalised Dalit jatis, was carved out from the broader SC grouping. However, the current manner in which jatis are categorised as EBC or Mahadalit is unscientific, based on a mix of outdated data and political calculations. For instance, the Dusadhs and the Chamars were unhappy that they weren’t granted Mahadalit status and pressurised the state to reclassify them. In the absence of any data on their relative economic standing vis-a-vis the Mahadalits, the government’s case for their exclusion was considerably weakened. Over time, a stage was reached where every Dalit jati in Bihar is also classified as a Mahadalit, rendering the category somewhat meaningless. Therefore, alongside doing raw counts of jatis, the exercise must also collect data on socio-economic outcomes, allowing the state to assess jatis by poverty levels, occupation, and education. Moreover, the state can chart the wellbeing of jatis even within districts (unlike a sample survey which may not be representative at the district level); this will allow for a much finer geographical calibration of social policy, allowing poverty alleviation programmes and reservations to benefit those most in need.
The caste census, a near inevitability now in Bihar, can have two dramatic consequences: First, by changing what is common knowledge among ordinary citizens on which jatis are numerous and prosperous, it can lay the ground to further a process of societal flattening the state desperately needs but has embraced only patchily; second, by combining data on caste counts with socioeconomic indicators, it can finetune development policy. The potential use of a carefully conducted census is immense: A jati-wise breakdown of mortality, for instance, could help understand the differential effects of Covid-19 in the recent past and allow the state to compensate particularly affected groups.
The possibilities are plenty, but the direction of change depends a lot on the boring mechanics of how data is collected, collated, analysed and updated. This is not easy, but the Socio Economic Caste Census (SECC) of 2011-12 — which continues to be used and updated a decade later in many states (except for the caste breakup data) — provides a clear starting point. The SECC designers spent considerable time identifying the right poverty indicators and relied on a carefully constructed data collection and monitoring architecture to ensure quality.
Good data alone may not bring development, but it could help lay the platform for better debate, claim-making, and policy. Bad data, however, is a precious waste of the State’s resources.
MR Sharan teaches at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Last Among Equals: Power, Caste and Politics in Bihar’s Villages
The views expressed are personal