An all-party delegation from Bihar; led by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, met Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently to demand a caste census in India. What is the meaning of a caste census and does the country need one? What does the Constitution say on the matter? What are the political implications of such an exercise and how likely is it? How do intra-caste socio-economic variations further complicate the debate? In this video, Gilles Verniers and D Shyam Babu unpack these questions and shed light on the need to collect data in a non-partisan way.
Trivedi Centre for Political Data, Ashoka University