Whither caste census? Why it was a non-issue in Bihar elections
For decades, Bihar has been described as the laboratory of caste politics. It was here that the language of social justice acquired its sharpest political expression. To study caste and politics in India without visiting Bihar is, as scholars often say, to miss the very grammar of how democracy negotiates hierarchy.
Bihar’s politics has for long carried the promise that democracy could turn social subordination into collective power. Hence, when the state government decided to undertake a caste survey, an exercise that enumerated caste and community shares in population and resources, it seemed, for a moment, that the State was about to close a full circle. When the numbers were released, they confirmed what everyone knew: the overwhelming weight of the backward classes, the narrowness of the upper-caste elite, and the persistence of inequality. It felt as if a new round of the Mandal debate might begin.
And yet, nothing of that sort happened. Census has all but vanished from public conversation in this month’s Assembly elections. In a state where every talk of governance or opportunity ends up in caste, it is striking that an exercise once expected to unsettle its polity turned into little more than white noise this election season.
Limits of redistribution:
Part of the answer lies in the simple fact that there were no surprises. The broad social arithmetic was already common knowledge. The official numbers confirmed what every party strategist and voter already knew. But the deeper reason lies elsewhere, in the slow transformation of its social structure and political economy. The violent churn of the 1970s through the early 2000s had already overturned the feudal order that once defined caste relations. The village landlord, the servile labourer, the caste-based control of land and labour, all these have largely faded. The new Bihar is not post-caste, but where caste is not in its 20th century avatar. Oppression has become less visibly direct and more structural.
Inequality now resides in new spaces — in access to quality education, in networks of social capital, and in the possession of marketable skills. Upper and middle-caste households, through cumulative advantages of education, language, coaching and networks, have managed to occupy the expanding ranks of middle-class professions and bureaucracy. The lower castes and Dalits, even when politically assertive, are disproportionately consigned to low-return circuits of migration and informal work.
In short, the transition from an agrarian to a migrant and market economy has shifted the axes of inequality: from land and patronage to labour, skills and opportunity. The proposition for an OBC reservations for lower castes in jobs and educational opportunities was done to redress this structural gap. However, as the expanse of public sector has drastically receded as India has embraced free market reforms in the last two decades, reservations in public sector jobs have faded to the background of public imagination and political agendas.
Even if the political will existed, the institutional space for translating caste enumeration into material redistribution has shrunk. Reservation, the main mechanism of representational justice, now covers only a small portion of the economy. With the rise of private employment and the informal sector, most of Bihar’s youth—especially its migrants—live outside the reach of any affirmative action.
For them, the promise of ‘jitni abaadi, utni hissedari’ sounds hollow without a road map to realise the promise. They know that neither the state nor the political class has the capacity to deliver that share. The politics of redistribution cannot survive on symbolism alone; it requires credible pathways of opportunity.
Politics of belonging:
This change in the political economy of caste has quietly transformed the moral meaning of caste itself. Caste no longer operates as a vocabulary of injustice; it now functions as an identity of belonging. The old slogans of ‘dignity, assertion, and nyay’ have been replaced by the softer language of representation and recognition.
The Mandal moment once promised to democratise power. Its residue today is a mosaic of smaller caste outfits, each speaking in the name of its fragment, each wanting its slice of the pie. Bihar is a living example of what scholars like Balmurli Natrajan have called the “culturalisation of caste”-the conversion of caste from a structure of inequality into a badge of cultural identity. This shift has robbed caste of its earlier political potency. Census, in that sense, has become an act of recognition without redistribution.
Structural closure:
Even on the recognition side, i.e. an increase in the number of candidate selection from EBC castes (which at present seems most skewed) is hard to come for given the incessantly fragmented nature of the category. Political structure too resists change. The costs of political entry have risen steeply, and the routes to political power are now heavily mediated. A self-contained circuit where political capital is constantly recycled through administrative and economic rent finances most of politics in Bihar.
In theory, the census provides a moral and political basis for democratising representation, for widening the base of participation by aligning state power with the real social composition of Bihar. But the current political economy allows little room for such correction. Representation is mediated not by demographic strength but by financial and organisational capacity.
Counting without consequence:
In the end, the story of the caste census in Bihar is not one of neglect, but of absorption. It has been normalised into the everyday arithmetic of politics. Caste has not disappeared; it has become routine. Elections in Bihar still run on caste calculations, but without the moral urgency that once animated them.
The irony is telling: the state that first turned caste into a weapon of transformation now treats it as a matter of managerial convenience. Census was supposed to provoke a reckoning; instead, it has produced indifference. Until enumeration is linked to believable policy programmes and moral imagination, the caste census will remain what it is today, a mirror of Bihar’s social structure, not a map for its transformation.
(The writer is an Assistant Professor at GITAM University, Hyderabad and associated with the research organisation People’s Pulse)
decades, Bihar has been described as the laboratory of caste politics. It was here that the language of social justice acquired its sharpest political expression. To study caste and politics in India without visiting Bihar is, as scholars often say, to miss the very grammar of how democracy negotiates hierarchy.
For decades, Bihar’s politics carried the promise that democracy could turn social subordination into collective power. Hence, when the state government decided to undertake a caste survey, an exercise that enumerated caste and community shares in population and resources, it seemed, for a moment, that the State was about to close a full circle. When the numbers were released, they confirmed what everyone knew: the overwhelming weight of the backward classes, the narrowness of the upper-caste elite, and the persistence of inequality. It felt as if a new round of the Mandal debate might begin.
And yet, nothing of that sort happened. Census has all but vanished from public conversation in this month’s Assembly elections. In a state where every talk of governance or opportunity ends up in caste, it is striking that an exercise once expected to unsettle its polity turned into little more than white noise this election season.
The limits of redistribution:
Part of the answer lies in the simple fact that there were no surprises. The broad social arithmetic was already common knowledge. The official numbers confirmed what every party strategist and voter already knew. But the deeper reason lies elsewhere, in the slow transformation of its social structure and political economy. The violent churn of the 1970s through the early 2000s had already overturned the feudal order that once defined caste relations. The village landlord, the servile labourer, the caste-based control of land and labour, all these have largely faded. The new Bihar is not post-caste, but where caste is not in its 20th century avatar. Oppression has become less visibly direct and more structural.
Inequality now resides in new spaces — in access to quality education, in networks of social capital, and in the possession of marketable skills. Upper and middle-caste households, through cumulative advantages of education, language, coaching and networks, have managed to occupy the expanding ranks of middle-class professions and bureaucracy. The lower castes and Dalits, even when politically assertive, are disproportionately consigned to low-return circuits of migration and informal work. In short, the transition from an agrarian to a migrant and market economy has shifted the axes of inequality: from land and patronage to labour, skills and opportunity. The proposition for an OBC reservations for lower castes in jobs and educational opportunities was done to redress this structural gap. However, as the expanse of public sector has drastically receded as India has embraced free market reforms in the last two decades, reservations in public sector jobs have faded to the background of public imagination and political agendas.
Even if the political will existed, the institutional space for translating caste enumeration into material redistribution has shrunk. Reservation, the main mechanism of representational justice, now covers only a small portion of the economy. With the rise of private employment and the informal sector, most of Bihar’s youth—especially its migrants—live outside the reach of any affirmative action.
For them, the promise of ‘jitni abaadi, utni hissedari’ sounds hollow without a road map to realise the promise. They know that neither the state nor the political class has the capacity to deliver that share. The politics of redistribution cannot survive on symbolism alone; it requires credible pathways of opportunity.
Politics of belonging:
This change in the political economy of caste has quietly transformed the moral meaning of caste itself. Caste no longer operates as a vocabulary of injustice; it now functions as an identity of belonging. The old slogans of ‘dignity, assertion, and nyay’ have been replaced by the softer language of representation and recognition. The Mandal moment once promised to democratise power. Its residue today is a mosaic of smaller caste outfits, each speaking in the name of its fragment, each wanting its slice of the pie.
Bihar is a living example of what scholars like Balmurli Natrajan have called the “culturalisation of caste”-the conversion of caste from a structure of inequality into a badge of cultural identity. This shift has robbed caste of its earlier political potency. Census, in that sense, has become an act of recognition without redistribution.
Structural closure:
Even on the recognition side, i.e. an increase in the number of candidate selection from EBC castes (which at present seems most skewed) is hard to come for given the incessantly fragmented nature of the category. Political structure too resists change. The costs of political entry have risen steeply, and the routes to political power are now heavily mediated. A self-contained circuit where political capital is constantly recycled through administrative and economic rent finances most of politics in Bihar.
In theory, the census provides a moral and political basis for democratising representation, for widening the base of participation by aligning state power with the real social composition of Bihar. But the current political economy allows little room for such correction. Representation is mediated not by demographic strength but by financial and organisational capacity.
Counting without consequence:
In the end, the story of the caste census in Bihar is not one of neglect, but of absorption. It has been normalised into the everyday arithmetic of politics. Caste has not disappeared; it has become routine. Elections in Bihar still run on caste calculations, but without the moral urgency that once animated them.
The irony is telling: the state that first turned caste into a weapon of transformation now treats it as a matter of managerial convenience. Census was supposed to provoke a reckoning; instead, it has produced indifference. Until enumeration is linked to believable policy programmes and moral imagination, the caste census will remain what it is today, a mirror of Bihar’s social structure, not a map for its transformation. (The writer is an Assistant Professor at GITAM University, Hyderabad and associated with the research organisation People’s Pulse) ***