The political discourse in India instantly went back to what we know when the Telangana government published the results of its massive socio-economic and caste survey in April 2026. Immediately, analysts, television hosts and politicians were interpreting the data through a single narrow lens: Who will receive a bigger share of government quotas? Where does the affirmative action baseline go?These questions are essential but, of course, the big story is the affirmative action program. Data does not transform itself and public debates on affirmative action miss the point of how deeply embedded inequality is, as critical policy thinkers have pointed out. The most important conclusion of the census in Telangana is not the count of government seats, but the ticking of the deprivation clock across all possible facets of life – in terms of housing, assets possession, spatial segregation and more. It is noticeable nowhere more than in a very peculiar category within the census itself: those who explicitly refused to declare anything, but registered themselves as “no caste.” In Telangana, 1,196,482 individuals – approximately 3.37% of the state’s population of 35.5 million – identified themselves as having “no caste.” For a long time, the move away from caste has been framed as a progressive and vanguard move towards a modern meritocratic society, the official word of the mainstream liberal commentators. However, the Telangana data gives an empirical corrective to this story by subjecting this “no caste” group to its 42-parameter Composite Backwardness Index (CBI). Also read: Telangana Caste Survey: What Did It Find and What Have Its Critics Said?This is the first time we have hard empirical evidence of a major sociological fact: that in India, “castelessness” does not mean lack of caste, it means having already enjoyed the benefits of the caste system over generations.The transatlantic mirage: From ‘castelessness’ to ‘colourblindness’The term caste may be confusing to an outside observer of the social organisation of South Asia. It is a system of social ranking given at birth that determines a person’s social position, job opportunities and social connections.This is a dynamic that is very similar to that of the United States’ race politics. In America, however, conservative and dominant groups tend to promote a “colourblind” ideology. On the surface, the argument seems laudable: If we talk to each other and ignore the colour of skin, racism will end.American sociologists and critical race theorists have, however, identified colourblindness as an ideological screen. Through this declaration, dominant groups effectively freeze existing inequalities in place. It renders a highly inequitable starting line as a neutral playing field and does so with considerable success for the following reason: it defends generational white wealth and systemic monopolies against remedial state policies.Similarly, in India, to say that one is “casteless” is a privileged evasion. It lets historically dominant groups obscure their inherited social capital under the cover of a modern and individualistic citizenship. It is easy to see how caste has ceased to be a factor if you have never faced the denial of a house, an assault for belonging to a certain caste or the generational call-up to menial labour from one’s lineage.The material topography of the ‘casteless’The neutral surface is completely removed from the empirical data from Telangana. In fact, the “no caste” category is not an average sample of ordinary citizens, but rather a very focused and concentrated sample of extreme socio-economic, political and educational privilege.The average score on the state’s CBI, on which a higher score reflects more systemic deprivation, is very high at 81. The “no caste” group, meanwhile, earns a 41, placing it in line with the very the highest strata of the population.This group’s material benefits are indisputable across all development indicators:“No caste” groups hold a clear urban economic advantage, dominating salaried government and private jobs, business ownership and professional services. Historical gains in education, networks and assets sustain this edge even after urbanisation. They lead in tax-paying households and formal sector participation. Land ownership follows the same pattern – higher rates, larger holdings and better irrigation access among “no caste” households.Also read: Why India’s Caste Census Debate Should Ask the Right QuestionsThis group also has disproportionately high rates of ownership of personal vehicles, luxury appliances and formal urban property.A whopping 20.4% of the state’s households are precariously dependent on agricultural crop loans, while only 2.2% of households in “no caste” communities are, a sign of how thoroughly this group has severed itself from the debt-ridden and ephemeral agrarian economy that defines subaltern life for many others. Where do these ‘casteless’ communities live?Anonymity cannot be assured when space is not secure. Spatial security is essential to anonymity. Of the total “no caste” population, an amazing 73% is living just inside the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) urban boundaries. Including the surrounding urban districts, more than 86% of this group lives within the metropolitan city apparatus. In contrast, almost none of the rural districts have large populations with high rates of caste refusal.This geographical dispersion proves that one must be cushioned by a thick layer of urban migration, structural anonymity and class privilege in order to be able to reject caste. A person’s caste in a traditional Indian village is a constant reality. It is part of collective village memory, enforced by segregated neighbourhoods (historically called wadas) and mapped onto labour. Those who are rural, Dalit and working class have no choice but to remain subsumed in a web of social monitoring and control. The city, on the other hand, provides its denizens with anonymity. It distinguishes personal identity from inherited expectations. But this urban gateway is selective, it is available mostly to those who already have the advantages of education, language and money accumulated across generations of ‘upper-caste’ privilege, whether or not they consciously recognise it as such. From ‘no caste’ to the EWS quotaThis leads us to the main paradox of how state welfare is being captured in modern India. Privileged sections have been protesting against caste-based reservations for decades, insisting they be replaced with an economic basis. This led to the formulation of the economically weaker sections (EWS) quota, which reserves benefits for the “general category,” broadly those who do not belong to historically disadvantaged groups like Dalits. While intended to address economic deprivation, the policy limits eligibility to the “general category” ‘upper-castes,’ leaving economically deprived members of marginalised communities outside its ambit. When individuals hide behind the administrative anonymity of “no caste” or the “general category,” they do not actually renounce state assistance. Instead, they leverage their structural security to navigate the private and public sectors, transforming historical caste dominance into what the state calls “modern merit.”If these policies are created without intersectional, disaggregated information, these already secure, urban, unmarked people can access public benefits meant for the vulnerable. They can demand state protection against ‘economic precarity’ as a category, while retaining the historical financial resources, social immunities and urban capital network their communities possess.Ambedkar’s radical insight vs superimposed neutralityThe Telangana “no caste” narrative lends direct support to the principles of Critical Caste Theory and echoes the framework demarcated by B.R. Ambedkar, one of the biggest anti-caste revolutionaries and the principal architect of the Indian constitution, foresaw this risk of casteism.Ambedkar described the caste system not merely as a collection of social groups, but as a structure of “graded inequality” built on a forced division of labourers. He insisted that the abolition of the caste system required wholesale elimination and that this had to be done with regard to the economic framework and caste practices that sustain it. So, it is a historical evasion to reject one’s caste label while retaining urban property, ancestral land, elite education and institutional monopolies built on that very system over many centuries.Also read: Telangana Caste Census and the End of Data OppressionCaste no longer needs active defenders or dominant groups to vouch for it because it has already served its mission. It has managed to convert ritual domination into something more modern and secular: corporate networks, elite English-medium education, worldwide capital and the social and economic capital that has enabled many from ‘upper-caste’ backgrounds to travel, study, work and settle in countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom. In their minds, the caste system is a normal privilege that they have acquired in a blithe manner.The converse is also true for marginalised caste groups: openly claiming caste identity, despite the social stigma and lived experience of insult that disclosure carries, remains the only constitutional means of access for such groups to claim resources, political representation and basic human dignity from the state.It is important to note that if the state accepts caste refusal at face value, without demanding deeper structural redistribution in return, it does not create a post-caste society. It simply obscures formal neutrality over stark and unequal starting points, allowing the ‘elite’ to hold onto their advantage without ever having to reckon with the ghosts of their privilege.Mahesh Admankar is a Researcher in Policy Analysis at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, USA, originally from Telangana in India.