Now, there is a race in the political parties of the country to claim credit of forcing the Central government to get ready for caste enumeration. The entire Congress is gung-ho about the issue with claims that Jan Nayak Rahul Gandhi brought the government on knees on caste enumerations. Social media is flooded with video clips in which Rahul Gandhi is heard saying that he would force the government for the caste enumeration from this Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. Does holding the caste enumeration by any chance need to get Lok Sabha or Rajya Sabha approval? These are some basic understandings that the Congress research team fails to provide its leader in the Lok Sabha often subjecting him to ridicule. But in politics sometimes optics matter a lot.

The Samajwadi Party (SP) and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) are not any less vocal about being the key force behind getting the government to eat humble pie on the issue. They are very upbeat and saying that this would help empowering more to SC, ST, OBC and other communities in the country that constitute 85 per of the total population. But if they think that the government has given them the issue on platter then they are actually mistaken. Obviously, it is not going to be an enumeration majorly divided like SC, ST, OBC and upper caste. It would be done in such a way where every caste and sub-caste is enumerated separately. This would also be done in such a way that it may break the hegemony of dominant castes in the OBCs like Yadav in Uttar Pradesh who are just around nine per cent that is less than Rajputs 10 per cent and Brahmins 12 per cent but they control most of the important OBC space including OBC politics of the state. Bihar has a little different scenario with approximately around 14 per cent Yadav population in the state but this unites rest of the OBCs against the Yadavs, there are other dominant OBC community like Kurmi and Kachi et al who are not ready to accept Yadavs as their leader and this has made Nitish Kumar as the longest serving CM of the state. Vaishya community in Bihar comes under OBC while it is Upper Caste in UP. Many such numbers may pull the rug under the feet of the champions of OBC politics.

The scenario in other states is completely different from north to south and east to west like its impact in West Bengal, Jharkhand, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and other north-eastern states. Because there is no homogeneity of castes in all these states with thousands of castes with different social status and interest. It in no way binds them together defeating the purpose of the Congress of other north Indian political outfits. Unlike UP and Bihar, Maharashtra politics is dominated by Marathas, Gujarat by Patels and Karnataka by Lingayat and Vokaligga and so on and so forth.

What is even more interesting is that many states want to give Muslims reservation with Karnataka and West Bengal considering almost the entire Muslim population of respective states for reservation. This is likely to be addressed in this caste enumeration as there is a huge resentment among Pasmanda Muslims for Asharfs controlling the major share of government jobs and other amenities. Around 5 per cent Ashraf (Upper Caste) Muslims are having control over the resources meant for Muslims. Pasmanda Muslims that include OBC and SC Muslims are not allowed by Ashraf Muslims to get any social, political and benefits exclusive to the community. Sources informed that there would be caste enumerations among Muslims and Christians too.  

Besides all this, the enumeration process will also help to understand how many people are living illegally in India, this might not be the mandate of the caste census but a fair understanding will be made especially where the BJP or NDA are in power. The government may use this initial information for its NRC commitment.

Caste census will pit political parties in the I.N.D.I.A. Block against each other. The Congress was insisting on this knowing very well that upper caste deserted the party long back and there is no chance to get their support back which is now the strong vote bank of the BJP. So, it is attempting to win over OBC votes, but will that be allowed by the Samajwadi Party in UP, the RJD in Bihar, JMM in Jharkhand, DMK in Tamil Nadu and NCP and Shv Sena in Maharashtra. Aam Aadmi Party is a new threat to the Congress in Gujarat and Mamata Banerjee will not let Muslim votes go to the Congress. Telangana and Karnataka are the two states where the Hindutva factor of the BJP over caste arithmetic of the Congress proved to be more workable with the help of Muslim votes. They have already completed caste enumeration in some way or the other. In view of the new caste census, the scenario in these states too may get changed.

Finally on the issue of claims of the opposition forcing the government for caste census, the BJP started bursting their claims showing its leaders batting for the caste census when Gopinath Munde’s 10 minutes clip of his Parliament speech in support of caste enumeration is doing rounds on social media. How the Congress rejected caste enumeration in 2011 is also being hot on social media. But the biggest threat is that basking in the so-called success of Rahul Gandhi for forcing the government to get caste enumeration done must now be swallowed beneath the throat if it wants to deal with the government plans of census which the Congress is unable to comprehend so far. The BJP is ready with its plan that would be revealed once enumeration is done. Till then it is for everyone to keep guessing.