-The Indian Express SECC opens the door to step away from the poverty line as a criterion for government benefits. The Government of India has just released data from the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011. It is perhaps the most ambitious exercise of this kind ever conducted in human history. The SECC 2011 has three parts: census of rural India, conducted by the Union ministry of rural development (MoRD), census...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The just released socio-economic and caste census data show more than 1.8 lakh manual scavengers in the country at a time virtually every state government has been denying their existence. Hundreds if not thousands in almost every state, including 2,500 in Bengal, told the surveyors they manually remove untreated human excreta from dry toilets, railway tracks and sewers - a practice banned by Parliament 22 years ago. State...

-The Hindu Although the SECC’s objectives are not likely to be met, it is a big step towards providing accurate information on the well-being of the people. The release of data for rural households from the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) is only the latest step in India’s tortured history of trying to count its poor. The idea behind the SECC was technocratic. Commissioned by the United Progressive Alliance in 2011,...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A new survey has shown that one in every two rural households is eligible for targeted government aid - a significant jump from two earlier estimates of those entitled to blanket benefits. The provisional socio-economic and caste census (SECC) data released by finance minister Arun Jaitley show that almost half the 17.91-crore households in rural India may be considered under various targeted welfare schemes, depending on their specific...

-DNA OBCs make upto 66.48% of the total 17.92 crore rural households – much higher than 54% decided by the Mandal Commission in 1980 Even as the Union government shied away from releasing the caste data collected in 2011, the rural socio-economic survey data put out on Friday speaks of two Indias – that of the affluent and the poor. Around 73 % of the country's people live in villages, with the...