Robbed of Caste Census pitch, Congress, allies must now reinvent campaign

The Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, approved caste enumeration in the next Census; the decadal exercise that has been pending since 2021.

Window of scope

The government has not spelt out a timeline for the Census nor shared details of the format that enumerators will have to follow for including caste in the exercise, allowing a window to the Opposition to keep lobbing its ammunition at the Centre on the issue. Additionally, with the timeline for the Census still indeterminate, the Opposition has the example of the Women’s Reservation Bill, passed by Parliament in September 2023, but far from being rolled out, to tell the public that the CCPA’s decision alone doesn’t guarantee expeditious conduct of caste enumeration.

Also read: Centre's nod to caste census: Significance and implications

The government’s decision is a complete volte face from the stand Modi and his party colleagues had taken publicly against caste enumeration during last year’s Lok Sabha poll campaign. The Congress and some of its allies in the INDIA bloc had pushed for a Caste Census, replete with details of socio-economic status of various caste groups, during the Lok Sabha polls and called it a necessary pre-requisite for social justice policy prescriptions. Modi and other BJP star campaigners, including Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, had hit back at the Congress and its INDIA partners then by dubbing a Caste Census as a “divisive exercise” and even pushing the slogan, batenge toh katenge.

Appropriation of Opposition pitch

The Opposition believes that its push for caste enumeration, coupled with an emotive ‘Save Constitution’ pitch, contributed significantly to bringing the BJP’s brute majority of the past decade to a minority of 239 MPs in the Lok Sabha. The BJP, however, continued to oppose caste enumeration even after the Lok Sabha results. When Lok Sabha’s Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi chastised the government in Parliament for not conducting a Caste Census, BJP MP Anurag Thakur had even mocked the former Congress president saying, “those who do not know their caste want to know the caste of others”; a jibe that was struck off parliamentary records after Opposition leaders, including SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, kicked up a furore.

From stiff resistance to sudden acquiescence, the BJP has, thus, come a long way on the issue of caste enumeration. Yet, in a practice straight out of its saffron toolkit, the Centre now plans to go all out to appropriate the Caste Census as another one of Modi’s ‘historic achievements’. This was evident in the way Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced the CCPA’s decision, alleging that while the Congress and its allies “used Caste Census only as a political tool”, the Modi government’s move demonstrates that it is “committed to the values and interests of society and the country.”

Also read: Govt's caste census decision: Opposition parties claim victory

Tough test for Congress

Given the wherewithal BJP has to get across its narrative to the grassroots, it can only be expected that moving forward, the party will aggressively sell the CCPA decision not as an instance of cowering under Opposition’s pressure but as a bold move for social justice that previous Congress-led regimes failed to deliver on – or worse, covertly derailed.

For Rahul’s Congress and the wider Opposition, the test, thus, is to be louder and more effective than the BJP in convincing people that Modi had been brought to heel by its relentless campaign. Putting the demand for a caste census at the vanguard of the Congress’s political rhetoric was Rahul’s decision, and he has stuck to it since 2023, when the subject became a permanent fixture of the party’s election manifesto for any election, be it for the Lok Sabha or state assemblies. INDIA Bloc parties such as Lalu and Tejashwi Yadav’s RJD, Akhilesh Yadav’s SP, and MK Stalin’s DMK have also been vocal votaries of caste enumeration.

Pressure to reinvent pitch

Sources across the Opposition spectrum concede that the CCPA’s unexpected move, at a time when the country’s singular focus was on the government’s response to the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack, dents the Opposition’s Caste Census campaign.

Also read: Muslims under OBC: Ideological fight around Telangana caste survey

“We have to reinvent this pitch and convince people that the government was compelled to agree to a Caste Census only because of the Opposition's pressure. We will need to keep asking the government about the timeline and format of the Caste Census and we will have to convince people that the government’s announcement is nothing more than words to distract from its failures on various fronts, whether it is the state of the economy and joblessness or the security lapse that happened in Pahalgam on the Union home ministry’s watch,” a senior Opposition leader from Bihar told The Federal.

Asserting that the Congress and its Opposition allies have “shown that we can pressure the BJP”, Rahul has laid out four clear demands before the Centre while “fully backing” the government’s nod for caste enumeration in the Census.

Rahul’s four demands

Rahul asked the government to give a clear timeline for the Caste Census to be concluded, share details of the “model and blueprint” that would be followed for caste enumeration, do away with the Supreme Court mandated ceiling of 50 per cent for caste-based reservations and implement reservations in private educational institutions as mandated under Article 15 (5) of the Constitution.

The LoP in the Lok Sabha also said his party was “willing to offer” the Centre inputs for a blueprint to implement Caste Census. Rahul said there are presently two models for caste enumeration in the country, one from NDA-ruled Bihar and the other from Congress-ruled Telangana, and that while the former was a “bureaucratic census”, the latter reflected a “people’s census”.

Also read: Caste census: Rahul welcomes govt's 'sudden' decision, seeks timeline

Rahul’s criticism of the Bihar caste survey, interestingly commissioned and completed when the Congress was part of the Nitish Kumar-led JD(U)-RJD coalition, stems from the fact that since its publication in October 2023, no further action has been taken by the current Kumar-led NDA regime in the state to tangibly improve the socio-economic condition of backward castes, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. In contrast, Rahul believes the Telangana caste survey model, based on inputs received through open public consultations, was a more “granular exercise” that was tailor-made to ensure a greater share of resources and power to the historically backward and oppressed communities.

Telangana model

Congress sources say Rahul wants the Telangana caste survey model to be aggressively showcased as the best possible format for caste enumeration and to lay the groundwork for greater participation of backward castes, SCs, and STs in both public and private sectors as well as for more targeted social welfare measures.

The big question, however, is whether the Congress can out-compete the BJP in its Caste Census sales pitch and, more importantly, whether members of the INDIA bloc would be willing to let Rahul become the face of the Opposition’s counter-narrative against the Centre’s announcement.