Caste Census: The Second Historic Blunder After Reservation in India’s Social Engineering
India has long struggled with reconciling its democratic promise of equality with its entrenched social hierarchies. While the reservation system introduced in the Constitution was aimed at correcting centuries of caste-based discrimination, it simultaneously institutionalized caste as a permanent identity in public life. Now, with the decision to conduct a caste census, we may be walking deeper into a trap we once tried to escape. If reservation was the first historic blunder—well-intentioned but ultimately divisive—the caste census threatens to become the second, cementing caste as the fulcrum of our political and social discourse rather than transcending it.