Declaring caste not mandatory during caste census

Citizens need not declare their caste to the enumerators during the caste census scheduled to begin on April 11 in the State.

The questionnaire for the census contains ‘secular’ as well as ‘gender-sensitive’ features. While citizens are free to not disclose their religion/caste, or declare themselves as atheists, the form also provides a separate code for the third gender.

The enumerators will gather information on as many as 55 topics from each family. Apart from the usual details such as name, sex, religion, etc, information such as age at the time of leaving school, the reason for discontinuing education, age at marriage, family avocation, if any, illnesses on account of the said avocation will be also collected during enumeration. All the information will be entered in the form of numbers.

The questionnaire prescribes code ‘3’ for the third gender (‘1’ for male and ‘2’ for females). The ‘religion’ column lists out six religions (Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Zoroastrianism - Parsi).

It also has a separate column for atheists. However, citizens can also declare that they do not know their religion (code 09) or they can even refuse to disclose their religion (code 10). The alternative names for one’s caste and sub-caste will be also recorded.

The Permanent Commission for Backward Classes has taken up the exercise.
“The Commission has directed to conduct the census without insisting on the information pertaining to caste and religion.

The questionnaire lists out 101 castes under the Scheduled categories and 1,247 castes under the Backward Classes category,” said Additional Deputy Commissioner R S Peddappaiah, who is also the Additional District Census Officer.

The unique feature is that the questionnaire contains a list of 80 traditional avocations and nine diseases that could be contracted on account of such avocations, he said.

Dr D Dominique, a former member of the Commission, said that there was a proposal to include a question on the duration of household work done by women in the questionnaire. “However, the proposal had to be dropped since a majority of the experts did not agree to it,” he said.