Caste census: The case for and against counting castes in India

A provocative new book warns that counting castes may entrench them further instead of dismantling the system.

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The country's next national census, scheduled for 2027, will - for the first time in nearly a century - count every caste, a social hierarchy that has long outlived kingdoms, empires and ideologies.

The move ends decades of political hesitation and follows pressure from opposition parties and at least three states that have already gone ahead with their own surveys. A 2011 survey - neither run nor verified by census authorities or released by the government - recorded an astonishing 4.6 million caste names.

A full count of castes promises a sharper picture of who truly benefits from affirmative action and who is left behind. Advocates say it could make welfare spending more targeted and help recalibrate quotas in jobs and education with hard evidence.

Yet in a provocative new book, The Caste Con Census, scholar-activist Anand Teltumbde warns that the exercise may harden the deeply discriminatory caste system, when the need is to dismantle it.