Cabinet approves caste and BPL census

New Delhi, May 19 (PTI) A head count to identify the
poor, including their caste and religion, was on Thursday
approved by the Indian government which aims at ensuring that
the benefits of targetted subsidy programme reach them.
A meeting of the Union Cabinet, chaired by Indian
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, gave its nod for conducting a
census in rural and urban areas to identify those living below
poverty line (BPL).
The enumeration on the basis of caste and religion
would be part of the census, that would begin in June and end
by December this year, Information and Broadcasting Minister
Ambika Soni said after the cabinet meeting.
This is the first time that the mammoth head count is
being carried out to identify the poor along with their caste
and religion. While the last BPL census was carried out in
2002, this is the first effort to carry out caste census since
1931.
The paper-less exercise would be carried out by the
state governments through low-cost hand-held devices to be
manufactured by state-run Bharat Electronics Limited.
It would help identify the proportion of every
religion and caste among the BPL category.
While the BPL data for urban and rural poor would be
utilised for the 12th Plan, the targetted subsidy schemes as
well as the Unique Identification programme (UID), the data on
caste and religion would remain confidential.
The Ministries of Rural Development, Housing and Urban
Poverty Alleviation and the Registrar General of India would
jointly conduct the census.
"This completely fulfils the assurance given by
government in Parliament to have caste-based census along with
the socio-economic profiling. Political leaders demanded
this", Soni said.

Under the exercise, all relevant households which have
been enumerated would be revisited, with the enumerators,
mostly from the state governments, going door to door.
The identification of urban poor is being carried out
for the first time as earlier only the rural population was
enumerated to help them avail targeted BPL benefits, a senior
Rural Development Ministry official said.
The rural population would be divided into three
categories, including exclusion of those above poverty line
and automatic inclusion of in the BPL category.
The last category would enable identification of the
targeted population by using seven parameters (or deprivation
indicators) and ranked accordingly. The parameters include
households with only one room, those without any adult member
between 16-59 years of age and no literate adult above 25
years.
The responses would be fed into a hand-held PC tab and
the data uploaded on central server at the tehsil level. The
device would be supplied by Bharat Electronics Limited,
starting June.
The time-frame of conducting the census has been
worked out and the state government employees would be
employed to carry out the exercise as teachers would not be
available for it, the official said.
He said the information on caste and religion at the
individual level would remain confidential and the overall
figures would be published separately.