Telangana Assembly Approves Statewide Caste Survey

The Telangana Legislative Assembly unanimously passed a resolution for undertaking a comprehensive household caste survey across the state. It aims to gather granular welfare data about socio-economic status categorised by castes to drive evidence-based policy interventions.

Key Details

Door-to-Door Survey Envisaged

The survey plans to collate caste data alongside information on education levels, income, employment and political representation through field visits to all households in Telangana facilitating customized upliftment initiatives.

OBCs, SCs and STs as Focus

Areas With significant populations, the exercise gives special emphasis to capturing disaggregated statistics regarding Other Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes for enabling targeted affirmative action by the state government.

Welfare and Entitlement Planning

By investigating ground reality, the caste census intends to tackle inequality and bridge development gaps through calibrated reservations in jobs and education, financial inclusion via schemes and monitoring political presence in local governance.

Addressing Data Gaps

Caste data collation has been long overdue given India’s last countrywide socio-economic survey dates back to 2011-12 without any caste breakup enumerated since 1931 census under British rule. States are now taking initiative while the Union government has not decided on conducting an all India survey.

Third State to Conduct Such Survey

The Telangana caste survey follows the footsteps of Bihar and Andhra Pradesh which also legislated for census including caste parameters to reform welfare planning, with the former hiking reservations based on findings.

Bihar Survey- Highlights

The first set of data revealed that over 60 per cent of Bihar hails from Backward or Extremely Backward Classes, and over 20 per cent come from Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes.
According to the second set of data from the Bihar government’s caste-based survey, around 34 per cent – of all families in Bihar survive on less than ₹ 6,000 per month, and 42 per cent of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes households live in poverty. While, only 25.09 per cent of General Category families are listed as poor and over 30 per cent of EBC families are poor. 5.76 per cent of Scheduled Castes had finished Class 11 and Class 12.

Andhra Pradesh Survey- Highlights

A special phone app has been designed by the government to conduct the census. Andhra Pradesh has become the second state in the country, after Bihar, to launch such a caste census. The ‘No caste’ option has also been provided.
The caste survey would capture details on socio-economic, educational, and employment aspects of all sections and categories of the people to support the state government in better policy formulation and implementation of the schemes.

Category: India Nation & States Current Affairs