Hyderabad: The YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) government in Andhra Pradesh has announced a ‘census’ of backward castes (BC) to identify the exact number of people in each caste group, their geographical spread, socio-economic situation, education and job level, etc.
The exercise will begin mid-November and is expected to be completed before the 2024 state election, which will be held simultaneously with the Lok Sabha polls.
The move comes at a time when parties like the Congress are promising to hold a caste census in poll-bound states, such as neighbouring Telangana, if voted to power.
The Nitish Kumar government in Bihar has already made public the results of a state caste survey, a move that triggered renewed demands for a national caste census. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has termed demands for a caste census a “ploy to divide the country in the name of caste”.
Political analysts say Andhra Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy’s census plan is meant to pre-empt any such election promise by the opposition Telugu Desam Party (TDP), which identifies itself as a party of backward castes.
“With the caste census announcement, Jagan has snatched away the TDP’s backward caste poll plank,” professor DAR Subramanyam, academic, political analyst and chairman of Guntur-based Navyandhra Intellectual Forum, told ThePrint.
The caste census, on the back of Jagan’s welfare schemes catering to the backward communities, direct benefits transfers, setting up of 56 corporations for various backward class groups like Yadavas, Vaddera, barbers and fishermen, and allocation of various political nominated posts to the BCs, said Subramanyam, will further help the CM disrupt the TDP’s backward caste votebank.
There are 139 communities in the state, excluding the SCs, STs and forward castes, which are categorised as BC, according to Andhra’s Minister for Backward Classes Welfare C. Srinivasa Venugopala Krishna.
“There has been this concern among the various BC communities whether their particular group has fair representation in various fields according to their population. And the caste census has been a long-pending demand from the community associations and leaders to know the facts. Our CM understood their agony,” Krishna told reporters in Amaravati Wednesday.
“The survey results, which would also identify the Most Backward Classes, would be helpful in improving their conditions, with community and area-specific interventions. We don’t want even 0.1 percent needy people to be left out of our welfare ambit,” the minister said, adding that “the caste census exercise is not for the sake of elections”.
However, a senior Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer part of the exercise said the survey would cover all households across the state, and thereby castes and communities, and would give the entire picture i.e., numerical composition of every group, including the six forward castes of Brahmin, Vysya, Kshatriya, Kamma, Kapu and Velama, and the Scheduled Castes or Dalits, Scheduled Tribes and the minorities.
“We can call it a caste survey,” the officer, who heads a department involved in the exercise, told ThePrint on the condition of anonymity.
The opposition TDP has dismissed the census as an election stunt.
“The idea was given by the (political advocacy group) Indian Political Action Committee to bring some backward caste votes to the YSRCP. It might even be a ploy to identify party-wise sympathisers and tamper with voter lists,” Panchumarthi Anuradha, a backward caste leader and TDP MLC, told ThePrint.
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‘Backbone of our society’
In April this year, on the occasion of social reformer Jyotirao Phule’s birth anniversary, Jagan had assured a “caste census” in the state. During the budget session, the Andhra assembly had passed a resolution and sent it to the Centre asking for a “caste census” to be held simultaneously with a population census.
“Since the process was getting delayed, we have initiated the BC census process. There is no dispute as the Supreme Court has allowed states to undertake a caste census-survey,” Krishna said.
A committee of senior IAS officers from the state departments concerned, such as BC, minority welfare, planning, etc, was formed to study how the exercise should be carried out. Village and ward secretariat system and volunteers would be utilised for the exercise. Before the launch of the census, consultation meetings and round table conferences would be held with BC groups in Kurnool, Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Tirupati and Rajahmundry, according to the minister.
“(TDP chief) Chandrababu Naidu is responsible for the continuing backwardness of the BCs. But our CM treats these communities not as backward but as the backbone of society,” the minister added.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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