{
  "id": 1911002,
  "title": "Count caste by all means. But abandon belief that counting settles anything",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/19/count-caste-by-all-means-but-abandon-belief-that-counting-settles",
  "topic": "world",
  "section": "World",
  "published": "2026-08-19T10:19:34.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The Indian Express",
    "slug": "the-indian-express",
    "url": "https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/count-caste-but-abandon-belief-that-counting-settles-anything-10840197/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Yogendra Yadav contends that the caste census exercise has been quietly eliminated by a technical decision, an open-ended question allowing every Indian to define their own caste, which produced 4.7 million caste names in 2011 and was subsequently abandoned. While Yadav's political analysis is somewhat convincing, the proposed drop-down menu approach adds that it \"poses no difficulty for the enumerator, as long as there is no confusion about caste names.\" However, this is precisely the problem, not about names, but about incentives. Basic NSS-PLFS statistics provide an explanation. In 1999-2000, 35.7% of Indians identified as OBC, rising to 40.9% five years later. With India's population growing at 1.8% yearly, the OBC population increased from 357 million to 447 million in five years, at a rate of 4.6% yearly. Meanwhile, the General category population shrank from 359 million to 342 million, at 0.95% yearly. Had the growth been real, OBCs would be over-represented among children, accounting for three-quarters of all births and being over-represented by more than 30 percentage points. However, the OBC share gap between children and adults has only narrowed from 2.0 points in 2004 to 1.2 points in 2025, even as the OBC population continues to grow rapidly. This suggests incentivized reclassification. Between 1991 and 2011, Sikhs, with similar fertility rates to Christians, grew at 1.2% yearly, matching fertility predictions, while Christians, with virtually the same fertility, grew at 1.9%, faster than the national average. This discrepancy indicates incentives at play, as Christians with backward-caste origins can claim reservation while holding minority status simultaneously. Therefore, counting caste is essential for allocating education and employment, but abandoning the belief that counting settles anything is crucial. Asking for caste, sub-caste, and surname, rather than relying on categories, avoids inviting incentives that distort the data. Hence, India should conduct a caste census to count correctly, but the belief that counting alone provides accurate results should be abandoned.",
  "summary": null,
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}