The inclusion of caste identity in the data collected under the Census enumeration remained unresolved even after the Group of Ministers (GoM) meet on Thursday to draw a conclusion on the issue.
The meeting saw a presentation by the office of the Registrar General of India on the pros and cons of including caste in the ongoing census exercise. Both, RGI Chandramouli and PG Dhar Chakravarthy, gave a presentation to the GoM on the issue. Sources confirm that RGI officials made it clear that it was a difficult feat logistically to include caste in the Census and that this could be done only in the second phase of the exercise.
?It was pointed out that enumerators, who are mostly government school teachers, would find it difficult to carry out the exercise, and that there was no real way of verifying any claim made to caste backwardness,? said a source.
Significantly, law minister M Veerappa Moily, who is a great supporter of including caste in the Census, left early as he had to present a copy of his book, the English translation of his Kannada novel Ramayana Mahanvesham, to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
The Union Cabinet appears deeply divided on the issue and some members of the GoM have even gone back to the history to prove their point?that even the last caste-based census in 1931 was flawed. ?In West Bengal alone 1,38,000 people had declared themselves to be casteless. Wherever, there are entitlements to be decided on caste, these things can happen,? said a minister. However, Moily had a counter argument claiming that since entitlements were already being doled out on the basis of caste, lack of credible data could make the system vulnerable to judicial activism. ?What if tomorrow, a judge hearing a case on the matter says that since there is no credible data on backward castes, there is no need for caste-based entitlements,? he is reported to have said at several forums debating the issue.