{"id":5696,"date":"2025-05-01T03:04:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T03:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=5696"},"modified":"2025-05-01T03:04:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T03:04:09","slug":"india-to-ask-caste-status-in-next-census","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=5696","title":{"rendered":"India to ask caste status in next census"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>India will conduct its first official caste census since independence, the government announced on Wednesday, a move likely to have far-reaching consequences for its politics and contentious affirmative action policies.<\/p>\n<p>Caste remains a crucial determinant of one&#8217;s station in life in India, with higher castes the beneficiaries of ingrained cultural privileges and lower castes suffering entrenched discrimination \u2014\u00a0and a rigid divide between both.<\/p>\n<p>More than two-thirds of India&#8217;s 1.4 billion people are estimated to be on the lower rungs of a millennia-old social hierarchy that divides Hindus by function and social standing.<\/p>\n<p>The decision to include detailed caste data as part of the next census &#8212; originally due in 2021 but yet to take place &#8212; was approved by a government meeting headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Cabinet Committee of Political Affairs has decided today that caste enumeration should be included in the forthcoming census,&#8221; government spokesman Ashwini Vaishnav told reporters.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This demonstrates that a government is committed to the values and interests of a society and country.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>No date has been announced for the next census.<\/p>\n<p>Amit Shah, India&#8217;s interior minister, called the move &#8220;historic&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This decision will empower all economically and socially backward sections,&#8221; he said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>Caste data was last collected as part of the official census exercise in 1931, during British colonial rule that ended with Indian independence 16 years later.<\/p>\n<p>Successive governments have since resisted updating the sensitive demographic data, citing administrative complexity and fears of social unrest.<\/p>\n<p>A caste survey was conducted in 2011 but its results were never made public because they were purportedly inaccurate.<\/p>\n<p>That survey was separate from the 2011 general census, the last time the world&#8217;s most populous nation collected demographic data.<\/p>\n<p>Modi&#8217;s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has in the past opposed the idea of enumerating people by caste, arguing it would deepen social divisions.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>India will conduct its first official caste census since independence, the government announced on Wednesday, a move likely to have far-reaching consequences for its politics and contentious affirmative action policies. Caste remains a crucial determinant of one&#8217;s station in life in India, with higher castes the beneficiaries of ingrained cultural privileges and lower castes suffering [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5696\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}