Overview
- The Cabinet-confirmed plan makes caste part of Census 2027 by asking respondents to state their caste in their own words, with enumerators recording answers verbatim rather than using a pre-set list.
- Experts warn this open format will create massive data‑quality problems because people report subcastes, clans, regional spellings and surnames, producing hundreds of thousands of unique entries that are hard to classify.
- The 2011 Socio‑Economic and Caste Census used the same verbatim method and produced about 4.67 million distinct caste names, a result officials later withheld for being unusable, which analysts say is the closest precedent.
- Officials are likely to standardise or group responses after collection to produce publishable tables, which raises questions about transparency over how raw answers will be altered and which categories will be released.
- Counting caste revives a long political debate that dates to independence over whether the state should enumerate social groups, with supporters arguing the data is needed to target affirmative action and critics warning it could entrench divisions.