Hyderabad: The Congress government in Telangana is taking rapid strides to conduct a caste survey in the state on the back of a similar initiative by the party in neighbouring Karnataka.The government proposed to adopt a resolution in the coming session of the assembly and give the whole process a statutory clothing by enacting a legislation.Chief minister A. Revanth Reddy has mandated backward classes (BC) minister Ponnam Prabhakar to prepare the draft Bill and launch a door-to-door survey immediately after the session.Reddy has also asked the BC welfare department, which will be the nodal agency for the survey, to send teams to Bihar and Karnataka, where caste surveys have been completed, to study their practices.The government aimed to fast-track the survey in order to fulfil the Congress’s election promise of extending caste-based reservations to the backward and marginalised sections proportional to their population in education, employment and welfare schemes within six months of coming to power.The Congress’s manifesto also promised a hike in reservations for BCs from the present 29%, including the 4% reservation for Muslims under the ‘E’ group of the list of BC castes.The party adopted a declaration at Kamareddy ahead of the elections, which was attended by Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah, promising a hike in reservation for BCs in newly constituted local bodies from 23% to 42%, as well as 42% reservation for BCs in contracts awarded by the government in civil construction projects.An annual budget of Rs 20,000 crore, totalling Rs 1 lakh crore in the five-year term of the Congress government, will be spent on the welfare of BCs, the declaration said.A month before the Congress’s BC declaration at Kamareddy, Rahul Gandhi had said a caste survey would be held if the party came to power. Photo: X/@INCTelangana.Though the caste survey was largely a sequel to the Congress’s stand on equitable social justice as decided at its ‘chintan shivir’ at Udaipur in 2022 and often raised by Rahul Gandhi later, its purpose in Telangana seemed to be to target the BCs and bring them back to the party fold.There are 128 castes among the BCs in Telangana. They constitute more than 50% of the state’s population, but unlike the SCs and STs, they lacked a homogenous character. The BCs had distanced themselves from the Congress and moved closer to the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) prior to Telangana’s formation.Former chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu had consolidated these gains by launching several welfare programmes for the section.After Telangana’s formation and the TDP becoming weak, the BJP attracted the BCs as part of its polarisation strategies.On the other hand, the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS), now the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), tried to strike an emotional chord with the BCs by holding ‘atmeeya sammelan’ meetings (meetings of camaraderie) with different castes separately to build a vote bank in the assembly and parliament elections.The Congress and the BJP were found wanting in wooing the section in this manner.Official sources were optimistic that the survey will aid in revising reservations for BCs in gram panchayats, zilla parishads and municipalities.A mobile app with the details of all castes and sub-castes will be created for enumeration and care will be taken to avoid the charge of bias as faced by the Bihar government in its survey, the sources added.The BRS tried to strike an emotional chord with BCs with their ‘atmeeya sammelan’ meetings. Photo: X/@PuranamSatish.Bihar’s caste survey showed the BC population in the state to be around 63%.Rajya Sabha member and prominent BC leader R. Krishnaiah said there were a number of court cases challenging reservations in local bodies in the absence of scientific data about the population of BCs. Population-based allocation of funds for corporations and federations assisting people in the traditional occupations of their castes was also hit.The previous BRS government had taken up a one-day comprehensive household survey in the state shortly after assuming the reins in 2014, but its report had never seen the light of day.But unofficial claims put the population of SCs in Telangana at 18%, STs at 10%, other castes at 21% and BCs at 51% as per the survey.It led to a demand by the SCs to hike their quota in education and employment to 18% in tune with their population.The SCs led by the Madiga Reservation Porata Samiti (MRPS) had also been demanding their categorisation into four groups – A, B, C and D – since 1994. The categorisation was implemented for some time during the chief ministership of Chandrababu Naidu but withdrawn later.Also read: Despite Caste Survey Politics, Is OBC Vote Eluding INDIA?Recently, the Union government has again constituted a committee of secretaries headed by the cabinet secretary to go into the categorisation of SCs after Prime Minister Narendra Modi conceded to the demand of MRPS president Manda Krishna Madiga at an election rally of the BJP in Hyderabad for the weaker sections.Aided by the survey, the Congress could hope to hijack the BJP’s place in supporting the demand for the categorisation of SCs ahead of general elections. The party had also conceded to the demand of 18% reservation for SCs and their categorisation into four groups named A, B, C and D in its manifesto. It also promised reservations for minorities and finance corporations for all BC castes.A former Congress minister who did not want to be named said the survey will help the government in extending largesse proportional to the population of the concerned groups. So far, the benefits were cornered by dominant caste groups like the Madigas among the SCs and the Munnuru Kapus among the BCs.Former Congress Rajya Sabha member V. Hanumantha Rao expected the SCs, STs and BCs to back the party in a big way after the survey as an equitable quota system would be in place.The Congress could hope to hijack the BJP’s place in supporting the demand for the categorisation of SCs ahead of general elections. Photo: Facebook/Narendra Modi.Telangana has never had clean data on the socio-economic status of its population since 1931, when a census was conducted during British rule.The chairman of the Telangana State Backward Classes Commission, V. Krishnamohan Rao, has warned about the danger of bias in the survey as happened in Bihar if the government were to conduct the survey through its departments. The commission was the competent authority for the purpose, he said.He recalled that a socio-economic survey by the United Progressive Alliance-II government in 2011-14 at a cost of Rs 5,000 crore was dropped by the subsequent BJP government as it was found that there were errors with regard to the details of forty million individuals in the survey taken up by the Ministry of Rural Development.The Supreme Court and some high courts had struck down the surveys as they lacked scientific validity.Krishnamohan Rao felt that social indicators like discrimination, financial status and the representation of targeted groups in various spheres could be thoroughly studied by commissions of inquiry.A retired bureaucrat, N. Jayaprakash Narayan, dubbed the survey as a retrograde step for political gains. It was nothing but another attempt to divide people on caste lines instead of making them less caste conscious, he said, adding that reservation on affirmative political action did not require a caste survey.He disagreed with the government’s claim that the survey was meant to identify beneficiaries for its welfare schemes. Better selection of beneficiaries was unrelated to caste survey going by past experience, he said.
