BENGALURU: As the Socio-Economic and Educational Survey (also known as the caste survey) conducted by the Karnataka government grinds to a halt for the festive season, reports suggest that the enumerators are conflating the patriarch’s caste as the household’s caste on a linear basis. While this is not entirely unexpected, the practice could be viewed as a missed opportunity to formulate a statistical database for intercaste marriages in the state.
That this is unexpected stems from the fact that the survey is designed to be less concerned with the individual members of a family unit, than the unit itself. As Prof. D Rajasekhar, former Director at Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), explains, “In socio-economic research, we [often] treat caste as a household variable, not an individual variable. We cannot have a situation where a household is unclassified that way. But at the same time, the government is going to miss a huge opportunity to figure out how many households have caste-based plurality.”
The issue runs deeper. If it is understandable for each household to be classified under a single caste, it is quite another matter for that caste to be the patriarch’s. There is a patriarchal assumption present, however long-standing, that readily posits “the man of the house” as its automatic representative, irrespective of whether or not he is the primary breadwinner. “This is a huge problem; a lot of identities and backgrounds are reduced. It doesn’t take gender neutrality into consideration. It is a very backward and regressive way of looking at household dynamics,” Rajasekhar asserts.
It is to be noted however that there indeed exist instances where the implications of such an assumption do not affect the outcome of the survey. Social activist Mallige Sirimane recounts that the team of enumerators that came to conduct the survey of her family was quite cordial, and asked the women first. “We have grown up identifying as casteless and part of the ‘manava dharma’ (humanity); since that is not an option in the survey, all of the family members opted for the “none of these [options]” option,” she remarks.
