Independent caste census is sheer splurge of tax payers' money

In the wake of the recommendation of the Group of Ministers headed by the Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, the Home Ministry has sought cabinet approval for an independent caste count to be conducted around June 2011. It is noteworthy that in India more than 300 million people are languishing below poverty level, at least 35 million children aged 6 - 14 years do not attend school, over 3 million children are living on the streets, and over 150 million children are working as bonded labourers and so on. Against this repulsive backdrop, the proposed move of the government to splurge whopping money to the tune of Rs. 2000 crore on caste census just to pander to some vested interests to help them accomplish their narrow political ends is highly insensitive and unwarranted. Since the enumeration of population (i.e. headcount) is a decadal phenomenon, the caste count can be undertaken along with the next headcount. The huge amount of taxpayers’ money in meanwhile can be utilized to assuage the plight of millions of hapless and impoverished people.
Moreover, there are serious doubts on any objective usefulness of this costly drill since in India the same caste bears different name tags in different parts of the Country e.g. a largely trading caste known as “Bania” in and around Haryana is addressed by more than 356 different names all across the India viz. Vani in Maharashtra, Vania in Gujrat, Sood in Himachal Pradesh, Mahajan in Jammu and Kashmir, Marwari in north-east and so forth. Anyhow, the caste census should be broad based enlisting the income, the means of livelihood etc. of the people of different castes so that it may subserve any objective purpose for further demographical and anthropological studies.

POST SCRIPT: Cabinet accorded approval on 9-9 2010 for an independent caste count to be conducted from June to September 2011.