The government may have decided to go ahead with a caste-based census but the logistics of the exercise continues to vex the home ministry, the nodal agency in charge of it. All political parties were asked their opinion on the prospect of a caste based census earlier and the majority opinion was that the enumeration should be done ?without compromising the integrity of the exercise?.
Among the various scenarios being worked out, according to top government sources, is to get a separate census on caste done parallel to the the census exercise done at the moment.
?The estimated cost of this parallel exercise is Rs 4,000 crore, but this will be without NPR data. So physical verification will be an issue,? said a source. The advantage of this system, it is said, is that the baseline data of a census would already be available. ?For example, the total population of a particular village or panchayat would already be recorded, therefore the margin of error in terms of absolute numbers cannot happen,? said a source.
The other option before the government is to buy enough computer systems, which record biometric data as per the requirement of the National Population Register (NPR). It would hasten the collection of data along with the NPR biometric recordings.
The NPR exercise has, according to sources, already been completed for some coastal areas and biometric metric recording has been recorded as upto 80%?a good average for the software and a high rate of success.
?The data was collected in less than a year, of roughly of a population of 1.3 crore people, using around 500 machines. The plan for the country is that we buy many more machines and continue to record the NPR and caste data simultaneously,? said a source.
The option is to hold camps where NPR and caste data would be recorded together. Thus, biometric data would also act as a physical verification of the data.
All these plans aside, the home ministry appears jittery with regard to this exercise. The political decision has been taken but there seems to be a long way to go before the logistics can be worked out.