The Union Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs on Wednesday decided to include caste enumeration in the next census. This will be for the first time since Independence that caste data will be collected in the census, though the data for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes is recorded. The broader caste data was last collected in the 1931 census. Bipartisan political support for the announcement suggests that it was only a matter of time before India began to enumerate on caste. In fact, it was one of the biggest poll promises of the Opposition parties, including the Congress, in the

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