The Socio Economic and Caste Census 2011 (SECC) was conducted for the 2011 Census of India. The Manmohan Singh government approved the Socio Economic and Caste Census 2011 to be carried out after discussion in both houses of Parliament in 2010. SECC-2011 was not done under the 1948 Census of India Act and the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India was not entrusted to do the same. The SECC 2011 was conducted in all states and union territories of India and the first findings were revealed on 3 July 2015 by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. SECC 2011 is also the first paperless census in India conducted on hand-held electronic devices by the government in 640 districts. The rural development ministry has taken a decision to use the SECC data in all its programmes such as MGNREGA, National Food Security Act, and the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana. SECC 2011 was the first caste-based census since 1931 Census of India, and it was launched on 29 June 2011 from the Sankhola village of Hazemara block in West Tripura district.
History
Both major political parties, the Indian National Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party had differences within the party over caste-based census. Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj supported the idea of caste-based census, while then Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram was against it citing practical difficulties in counting caste while conducting the census. SECC 2011 data will also be used to identify beneficiaries and expand the direct benefit transfer scheme as part of its plans to build upon the JAM (Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana-Aadhaar-Mobile Governance) trinity. SECC 2011 also counted other aspects like Manual scavenging and Transgender count in India. SECC 2011 was not conducted under 1948 Census of India Act, which in turn made information disclosure voluntary for citizens, and not a mandatory disclosure. Socio Economic and Caste Census 2011 was the fourth exercise conducted by Government of India to identify households living below the poverty line (BPL) in India that would get various entitlements, after three censuses in 1992, 1997 and 2002. The last BPL census was conducted in India in 2002 and the procedure adopted was to collect information on 13 indicators for every rural household and assign a mark for each of these. The first caste census was conducted in India in 1881. In January 2017, Central Government accepted recommendations to use Socio-Economic Caste Census, instead of poverty line, as the main instrument for identification of beneficiaries and transferring of funds for social schemes in rural areas.
SECC 2011 has three census components which were conducted by three separate authorities, but under the overall coordination of Department of Rural Development in the Government of India: Census in Rural Area has been conducted by the Department of Rural Development. Census in Urban areas is under the administrative jurisdiction of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation. Caste Census is under the administrative control of Ministry of Home Affairs: Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India.
SECC data 2011 has been referred for analysis by an expert group, headed by NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Arvind Panagariya. This expert group is set up by the ministries of social justice and tribal development, before making public.
Caste census published in July 2014
Socio Economic and Caste Census 2011 conducted by the Registrar General of India has come out with 46,73,034 categories of caste, sub-caste, synonyms, different surnames, gotras in the caste and clan names. These caste data were sent to all the states in November 2014 for clubbing them to consolidate the caste count. On 28 July 2015, Government of India said that a total of 8,19,58,314 errors were found in caste particulars and all states and Union Territories, of which 6,73,81,119 errors have been rectified. However, 1,45,77,195 errors are yet to be rectified. A report of Parliamentary Committee on Rural Development submitted to Lok Sabha Speaker on August 31, 2016 stated that 98.87 per cent data on individuals’ caste and religion is error-free. Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner noted incidence of errors in respect of 1,34,77,030 individuals out of total SECC population of 118,64,03,770.
The Census 2011 recorded 11.65 lakh rural houseless people, while in SECC their numbers were only 6.1 lakh. The provisional rural data of SECC 2011 shows Scheduled Castes at 18.46% (or 15.88 crore), Scheduled Tribes at 10.97% (9.27 crore), Others at 68.52%, and 2.04% (or 36.57 lakh) as “No Caste & Tribe” households.