The state government is all set to undertake the second Socio-Economic Survey between September 22 and October 7. With only two days left for the launch of the exercise, the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government appears to be going full steam ahead without having made any serious effort to correct some of the major misconceptions that plagued the 2015 survey.
The biggest misconception about the survey, currently as well as in 2015, is that various groups of people, including politicians and community leaders, think that the state government is out to do a caste-based population headcount. The Congress government has made little attempt to explain clearly to people that the datasets of populations of individual castes are a byproduct of the survey’s purpose of measuring caste-based social, educational and economic backwardness. This leaves the state government open to the same criticism levelled at the 2015 survey by caste groups—without a shred of proof—that it was “unscientific” because it had “undercounted” various communities.
Another criticism levelled at the survey was that the government was conducting a census. These claims continue to be repeated by various groups and BJP leaders. The Karnataka Rajya Vokkaligara Sangha, Akhila Bharatha Veerashaiva Lingayat Mahasabha and the Akhila Karnataka Brahmana Mahasabha have filed PILs in the Karnataka High Court which is scheduled to be heard on September 22.
However, due to the claims that the 2015 survey was unscientific – despite the survey having covered 94% of the state’s population – this time around, the state government has roped in electricity supply companies to furnish a house list based on household power connections. Once this list is finalised, 1.75 lakh government school teachers will begin the survey on September 22. Anyone left out of the survey can call the helpline 8050770004 or reach out to the commission through its website.
In the past month, the leaders of various caste associations have issued statements and instructions to their communities through the media. Their statements reveal that they think that the point of the social and economic survey is a caste headcount and that the population numbers will determine whether or not they will benefit from reservation policies. However, while population was factored in by previous backward classes commissions, it was not the decisive criterion while assessing backwardness.
Caste groups mobilise
Once it became clear that the state government was indeed going ahead with the second survey, various caste groups began to mobilise across the state, issuing statements on how community members should identify themselves in terms of caste, sub-caste and religion.
For instance, former MP BK Hariprasad, a Billava, urged people to identify themselves in terms of however they are known in their respective regions. He said the community members should identify themselves as Billavas in Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts, as Namadhari in northern Karnataka, Deeva in Shivamogga, and Idiga in other parts of the state.
The weavers’ federation accused the state government of under-counting its community during the 2015 survey, and announced in Gadag that it has developed its own app to count the population of the community. Its president BS Somashekar lamented that the 2015 survey had shown that the community population was just nine lakh even though its members were present in all 224 assembly segments.
The Akhila Karnataka Hoogara Seva Mahasabha has urged its community members to state that they are ‘Hindu’ by religion, ‘Hoogar’ by caste and that their caste occupation is florist.
The Karnataka Rajya Vokkaligara Sangha too has given a similar call, asking caste members to identify themselves as ‘Vokkaliga’ by caste, and mention ‘Kunchitiga’, ‘Hallikara’ etc as sub-caste. The Sangha warned against mentioning the sub-caste in the column for caste.
However, the Karnataka Rajya Hallikara Sangha has urged its community members to register themselves as ‘Hallikara’ by caste, Vijaya Karnataka reported. Vice-president of the Sangha, KM Nagaraj, told the media that community members must register themselves as ‘Hallikara’ by caste and ‘Hindu’ by religion as Hallikara was already identified as a separate caste in the 1941 Census.
BJP and Lingayats
Lingayats had found a natural ally for their political ambitions in the BJP after the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi unceremoniously fired Veerendra Patil from the post of chief minister in 1990. In the decades since, BS Yediyurappa emerged as a formidable mass leader and the Lingayat face of the party. The community itself benefited from the BJP’s largesse thanks to Yediyurappa’s generous financial assistance to various maths. Ideologically too, many Lingayat seers have espoused Hindutva.
However, the Lingayat Mahasabha’s stance on the “caste census”, as the survey is popularly called, has exposed cracks in this political and ideological alliance.
Since the second socio economic survey was announced, the Akhila Bharata Veerashaiva Mahasabha (ABVM) has given a call to community members to identify themselves as Lingayat / Veerashaiva-Lingayat / Veerashaiva by religion, and enter their castes or sub-castes separately in the relevant columns.
The current questionnaire allows the following choices for religion: Atheist, Buddhist, Don’t know, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jain, Sikh, Parsi, and others. Lingayat leaders have been urging the community to register themselves as ‘Others’ and specifically as ‘Lingayat’.
After weeks of silence on whether or not the BJP would support the Akhila Bharata Veerashaiva Mahasabha’s call that Veerashaiva-Lingayats should list themselves as a separate religion and not as Hindus, the BJP appears to have decided to tread cautiously.
During the Veerashaiva Lingayat Ekyata Mahasaba held on September 19 in Hubballi, attended by Lingayat leaders cutting across party lines, some of the Panchacharyas and the heads of Virakta Maths, the BJP refrained from taking a clear stand.
Forest Minister Eshwar Khandre, who is also the national vice president of the Mahasabha, said that if Lingayats were united on the question of faith, they would be successful in getting a separate religious status.
Former CMs Jagadish Shettar and Basavaraj Bommai of the BJP, however, were studiously vague in their responses. Both talked about the technicalities of identifying themselves in terms of a religion that did not yet have official recognition.
In a detailed piece for The Wire, slain journalist Gauri Lankesh cites the works of murdered scholar MM Kalburgi to explain the history and complexities of the terms Veerashaiva and Lingayats and the current status of Lingayatism.
There was no agreement on this question even among the Panchacharyas, the heads of the five Veerashaiva Maths. The convention did not pass a resolution.
During a meeting of Lingayat BJP leaders chaired by Yediyurappa on September 17, the consequences of a separate religious status for Lingayats were reportedly discussed. Leaders felt that once a separate status for Lingayats became part of official records, it would lend credence to the view that Lingayats were not actually Hindus, and create a setback politically for the BJP. Yediyurappa emphasised that it was important to maintain the unity of the Lingayat community. It was decided to tread carefully and take a decision after consulting seers of various maths, Vijaya Karnataka had reported.
Although in the past the BJP and RSS were openly opposed to Lingayatism being considered a separate religion, it has adopted a more cautious approach after the Mahasabha changed its stance in 2023.
In recent years, the RSS has sought to overtly appropriate Lingayatism and project it as a sub-sect of Hinduism. These attempts have not gone down well with a section of Lingayat leaders, including those in the Mahasabha.
A book called Vachana Darshana published by an RSS affiliate in September 2024 raised the hackles of many Lingayat leaders who alleged that the book was misrepresenting the vachanas of Basavanna and others. It brought together two Lingayat bodies that had previously held opposite positions on the question of whether or not Lingayatism was a separate religion.
The Jagatika Lingayat Mahasabha (JLM) led a movement ahead of the 2018 assembly elections demanding a separate religious status for Lingayatism, and it was supported by a section of Congress leaders such as Minister MB Patil. Back then, the BJP, RSS and the Akhila Karnataka Veerashaiva Mahasabha (AKVM) opposed the movement. It was only in December 2023, nearly a century after maintaining that Lingayatism was a part of Hinduism, that the AKVM passed a resolution stating that Lingayatism was a separate religion. The JLM and AKVM came together in February this year and published Vachana Darshana—Satya versus Mithya, a counter to the RSS book Vachana Darshan.
However, not all Lingayat seers are on board with this position.
Advocacy groups demand social justice
Several advocacy groups such as the Karnataka Sarva Samudayagala Samajika Nyaya Samrakshana Abhiyana, Karnataka Shoshita Samudayagala Okkoota, Jagrutha Karnataka and Karnataka Damanita Hindulida Samudayagala Sangthane have demanded that the survey be carried out in a scientific manner. They have written to Madhusudan R Naik, chairman of the Backward Classes Commission, warning against the survey being conducted haphazardly in the haste to complete it on time.
They urged the state government to ensure that the survey, which is scheduled to be conducted during the Dasara holidays, might suffer due to the short time period of slightly over two weeks allotted to it.
They said it was very important that the Commission hold consultations with all stakeholders, particularly the smallest and most marginalised communities, before the survey begins to ensure their participation for comprehensive data. They noted that while various organisations had launched awareness programmes, the commission itself had done little to reach out to the most marginalised communities. “This task is important even from the standpoint of resolving the confusions that powerful vested interests are spreading about the survey,” they said.
The groups noted that widespread awareness needed to be created about the purpose of the survey, especially because vested interests were spreading the canard that the survey was being conducted to benefit certain communities. Rumours were also being spread about the necessity of the state government carrying out such a survey when the Union government was already tasked with the job of conducting a caste census along with a population census.
“In such a situation, it is important to make people aware that the second survey is not a headcount but a social and economic survey that the Permanent Backward Classes Commission is carrying out to understand the social, educational and economic conditions of seven crore people of the state. It is crucial to make people understand that what the Union government does is a census, and what the state government is doing is a survey,” the groups said in their representation to the Commission and urged the chairperson to give widespread publicity to the survey.
The groups also demanded that the commission ensure that unlike the 2015 survey, this time, the commission collates secondary data from government departments and bodies. “The lack of will in the political establishment and not the commission itself was the reason for the first survey not being implemented. Despite this, the commission was blamed at every stage for failing to be transparent. Hence, the second survey must ensure that transparency is maintained during the whole exercise.”
They also urged the government to provide remuneration to the surveyors to ensure that they did not feel burdened by the additional work given to them by the state government.
No lessons learned
The government's handling of the second survey appears to follow the same problematic approach as the first, raising concerns about lessons learned.
Associations of dominant castes and politicians from these dominant castes cutting across political parties successfully created several narratives that undermined the survey: that the survey was a caste census meant to do a headcount; that the state government had no authority to conduct a such a ‘census’; and that the survey was “unscientific”.
With nobody from the government countering these claims effectively, and a media little-inclined to examine these narratives, vested interests successfully undermined the 2015 survey’s integrity.
This time round too, the same claims are being made, and nobody except Siddaramaiah appears to be defending the exercise, or explaining that the survey is actually mandated by law.
When Siddaramaiah held a press conference on June 12, announcing the government’s decision to junk the 2015 survey due to objections from the public, he explained in detail the legal basis for the state government to carry out a social and economic survey.
He had said at the time that a socio-economic survey was mandated once every 10 years to assess the relative backwardness and progress of various castes and communities under Section 11(1) of the Karnataka State Commission for Backward Classes Act 1995. This Act is itself a product of the Indra Sawhney judgement of the Supreme Court.
However, even this explanation was too little, too late, particularly, as the government appears to have made no attempt since to create public awareness that the government has a legal mandate to carry out the survey.
In the meanwhile, BJP leaders are still claiming that the state government has no legal basis to carry out a “jaati ganati” (caste census) and that only the Union government can do so; that the state government was trying to “divide” Hindu society by allowing people to identify as both Christian and by their caste.
Madhusudan Naik defended the published list of categories, which included terms such as ‘Vokkaliga Christian’, saying that people chose to identify themselves with such terms and that the commission could not exclude them. It is not clear how the government will address these concerns as the Commission is an independent Constitutional body.
However, such remarks, or the odd statement from Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar that the survey would provide “social justice to OBCs” and PWD Minister Satish Jarkiholi’s vague reply that “time would answer” the allegations about the survey, are hopelessly inadequate to counter the most important misconception about the survey created by hours video news footage and reams of newsprint. The point of the socio-economic survey is to measure caste-based backwardness and not count caste populations.