My wife's note of circumspection on the caste census

The Tribune, New Delhi, September 15, 2010, P. 10
CASTE CENSUS MUST HAVE A PURPOSE
The Cabinet approval for an independent caste count to be conducted from June to September 2011 is uncalled for (news report, “Cabinet nod to caste count in census”, Sept 10). 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 and over three million children are living on the streets, and over 150 million children are working as bonded labourers and so on.
Against this backdrop, the move of the government to spend a whopping sum of Rs 2,000 crore on caste census just to pander to some vested interests to help them accomplish their narrow partisan ends is unwarranted.
The huge amount of taxpayers’ money can be utilised 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 tags in different parts of the country. Anyhow, the caste census should be broad-based enlisting the income and the means of livelihood, etc. of the people of different castes so that it may serve the intended purpose.
NEETI GOYAL, Bahadurgarh