Will a caste census make tens of millions desert Mr Modi?, asks Shekhar Gupta.
The top court was hearing a plea filed by advocate Krishan Kanhaya Pal who said that the governments are unable to share the benefits of the welfare schemes with all sections among backward classes due to a lack of caste-based survey and a caste-based census of the OBCs is of 'vital necessity'.
Leader of Opposition in Bihar Legislative Assembly Tejashwi Yadav on Monday said the caste-based census will help in preparing welfare schemes for people from different sections of society.
'Is it time to think beyond the traditional questionnaire-based approach in India?' asks Atanu Biswas.
It is not much of an issue just now, but it could become one if the idea of caste census captures socio-political imagination, going beyond electoral tags and identities, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Faced with elections in Uttar Pradesh, home to a large Muslim population, the Centre has already announced that it will implement the Sachar report in toto.
Whenever the Census operation resumes, it will capture the impact of Covid-19 to a large extent, including the extra-lethal second wave, reports Abhishek Waghmare.
The JD-U and the Opposition RJD are united on a caste census in Bihar, which the BJP is opposed to.
Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini has reached out to the SCs and the poor with the accelerated implementation of various schemes, especially the B R Ambedkar housing scheme.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Bihar government to put in the public domain the break-up of the caste survey data to enable those aggrieved to challenge the findings.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday sought data on the beneficiaries of Section 6A of the Citizenship Act in Assam, saying there was no material before it which could indicate that the effect of granting Indian citizenship to Bangladeshi immigrants between 1966 and 1971 was so great that it impacted the demographic and cultural identity of the border state.
Congress MP Rahul Gandhi on Friday expressed his regret that the Other Backward Class (OBC) quota was not provided under the Bill brought by United Progressive Alliance (UPA) in 2010.
The Supreme Court has directed the Maharashtra state election commission to notify local body elections in the state within four weeks. The court also ruled that the contentious issue of OBC reservation in local body polls will be as it existed prior to the 2022 Banthia Commission report. The court accepted the commission's report, which recommended a census to fix exact data on OBCs and reserve 27 per cent seats for the category in local body polls in Maharashtra. The bench on Tuesday fixed a timeline for concluding the local body polls and asked the state panel to conclude it in four months. The outcome of Maharashtra local body elections would be subject to decisions in pending petitions before the apex court.
'Earlier, we used to talk about a deficit economy. There is a deficit in democracy' 'If you read superficially Gandhi and Ambedkar and Nehru, some misconceptions and misunderstanding come to mind, as if they were at loggerheads and they differed radically in their views' 'India is one nation. There is only one citizenship. No citizenship for South India and no citizenship for North India and another for the Northeast'
As the poverty rates in the country declined below 5 percent in 2024, a research study by State Bank of India also highlighted that the extreme poverty in the country has been reduced to minimal.
The Supreme Court on Friday questioned the Bihar government as to why it published its caste survey data but refused to restrain it from making public further data, and said it may examine if the state has power to conduct such an exercise.
Kumar said after the meeting that all parties from Bihar spoke in one voice on the need for a caste-based census, and asserted that statistics about different castes will help in formulating development schemes effectively as many of them have not benefitted so far in line with their actual population.
The development of private data sources is a hugely positive development. It should serve as a challenge to the government to improve its own record on producing timely and reliable statistics, points out T N Ninan.
26 tigers have already died this year.
Nearly one in six people living in England and Wales last year were born outside the country and Indians constituted the largest chunk at 1.5 per cent of residents, according to latest statistics based on the country's 2021 census data.
In a statement, the Population Foundation of India said it is deeply concerned about recent media reports "misreporting" the findings from the study to spread alarm regarding the growth of the Muslim population in the country.
'Peninsular Indians could ask 'Why should we contribute half of India's tax revenues if we account for only a quarter of the seats in the Lok Sabha?'.' 'The rest of the country seems likely to counter that 'democracy means one vote per person irrespective of where that person resides in India'.' 'With no easy answers to this thorny debate, the south's economic ascendancy could end up creating a Hobson's choice.' A revealing excerpt from Nandita Rajhansa and Saurabh Mukherjea's book, Behold the Leviathan: The Unusual Rise of Modern India.
Members cutting across party lines demanded that an all-party delegation call on the prime minister to seek caste-wise census to determine the population of other backward classes.
47 million young Indians, under the age of 24, are jobless, and looking for work.
'The COVID-19 threat is still looming large. The census and NPR are not in the priority list of the government as of now'
The Telangana government officials would submit a report by February 2 on the caste survey held in the state last year.
Shah also said the Census 2021 data will be collected through mobile app.
A BJP source admitted that a census will inevitably reconfirm the numerical majority of the OBCs. 'That will overturn social equations and consign the upper castes to a twilight zone of marginalisation. The RSS won't accept it.' Radhika Ramaseshan reports.
For a country with a huge atheist vote bank, relatively few claim to be irreligious, says Devangshu Datta
Australia, Canada, US and UK are restricting immigration, but other countries are opening their doors.
'This is going to generate a new debate on reservation because the quota for Economically Weaker Sections is 10%, and that is for nearly 16% of the population.' 'For 16% you are giving 10%. This is set to raise eyebrows among the OBCs after the caste survey.'
'While suppression of information is acceptable for the government, the Opposition's efforts at pinning the government and its leaders is labeled anti-national,' points out Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
According to a parliamentary response by the Union health ministry in 2023, around 654,000 families in Delhi are eligible to enrol under the scheme.
'Why does a State that sees a national security issue at every turn not recognise the seriousness of the data from sensitive databases being breached?'
The 'mediation' by the United States from behind the scene on the diplomatic track appears to be once again working, which calls on both Delhi and Islamabad to show restraint and pull back from a military confrontation, notes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Gandhi said the Congress' slogan is 'count' because that would be the first step towards justice.
Collecting caste-based data will be a major challenge, but it would have to be delinked from the census, to prevent respondents from misrepresenting facts, says Amitabh Kundu
'We don't have to compete with Maharashtra or Gujarat. We have to now start thinking about how we compete with the United States or China.'
With the Bihar government releasing the findings of its caste survey, pressure seems to be mounting on the Karnataka government, especially within the ruling Congress, to make the state's Socio-economic and Educational Census, popularly known as the 'caste census', public.
The number of people living in England and Wales identifying as Christian has fallen below half the population for the first time, while those identifying as Muslim or Hindu have registered a small rise, according to the latest census figures released on Tuesday.
