Bihar caste-survey: Phase 1 done, form for next phase still being finalised

During the next phase, information on people’s caste and socio-economic status will be collected

Halfway through the much-anticipated Caste-Based Survey (CBS) currently under way in Bihar, the form for its next and most crucial phase where information on people’s caste and socio-economic status will be collected, is still being finalised, officials confirmed to The Hindu.  

The CBS, which began on January 7, is being carried out in two stages. The first phase was a household counting exercise, which has now been completed with district administrations expected to send in their final reports by the end of January.

During the second stage, which is set to begin from April 1, information on people’s caste and their socio-economic conditions will be collected. However, the form for the purpose has not been finalised, senior officials in the State government said.

An official of the General Administration Department (GAD), the nodal department for the survey, said, “There is a drop-down box, which will have a list of about 200-300 castes and the enumerators will have to just choose from one of them after collecting the information from the concerned citizen. Because of this we will be able to avoid multiplicity of the number of castes due to variations in spelling.”

While the second stage will mandatorily require the head of each family to vouch for the information on their caste they have provided, each enumerator will also be accompanied by an assistant – who will in most cases be the local Anganwadi worker or social worker aware of caste locations of village residents. “This is an additional layer of confirmation for us,” an official explained.

Further, the second phase is expected to collect “unprecedentedly” detailed information such as landholding, property ownership, education, employment, mobile and internet usage and income, among other things, sources said, adding the complete form was “still being finalised” as some columns “are still being added and deleted”.    

Officials added that the form will be ready by the last week of February, just in time for enumerators to begin their “elaborate training programme” on how to hit the ground running with it. There will also be a hard copy form with enumerators as a contingency, in case the mobile app, using which the phase will be carried out, malfunctions or the software glitches, they added.