KEY TRENDS   • Oxfam India's 2023 India Supplement report on poverty and inequality in India reveals that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Following the pandemic in 2019, the bottom 50 per cent of the population have continued to see their wealth chipped away. By 2020, their income share was estimated to have fallen to only 13 per cent of the national income and have less than 3...

-IdeasForIndia.in The Mandal Commission and Sachar Committee reports, among others, have indicated the existence of caste inequalities within the four major caste groups. However, data on this subject remain limited. Using data from a novel 2014-2015 survey conducted in Uttar Pradesh, this article shows that within-group inequalities among upper castes are significantly less, relative to the within-group inequalities observed among both Hindu and Muslim OBCs and Dalits. Broadly, four social groups –...

-The Hindu Handbook sees prejudices and ignorance or deliberate misinformation campaign on the exercise The Registrar General of India (RGI) anticipates “organised movement” against the decennial Census exercise such as agitation for inclusion of Other Backward Classes (OBC) and court cases against the collection of data for the National Population Register (NPR). The concern is documented in the Census of India 2021 Handbook for Principal/District Census Officers and Charge Officers that has been...

-The Hindu The Socio-Economic Caste Census, 2011 was organised not as an OBC survey but to get the caste status of all in the country in order to improve the delivery of targeted benefits, the Centre said. The Supreme Court on Wednesday said the law negated a caste census and “the Constitution believes in population and not in caste or religion” even as the Centre insisted that data collated during a Socio-Economic...

-The Hindu Caste data will help us understand the contours of inequality and craft reasoned and inclusive policies The debate about whether the decennial Census should collect data on caste from individuals who fall into the administrative categories of ‘General’ and ‘Other Backward Classes’ (OBCs) has been argued by public intellectuals, politicians, and government administrators for decades. As the Census currently only collects data on ‘Scheduled Castes’ (SCs) and ‘Scheduled Tribes’ (STs),...