Telangana has announced the formulation of a Composite Backwardness Index using the state’s caste survey data to measure disparities across 243 subcastes.
The “relative backwardness” of the subcastes will be measured using 43 parameters in rural and urban areas, said a statement by the expert committee constituted this year by the state to study, analyse and interpret data collected by the Social Education Employment Economic Political and Caste (SEEEPC) survey of 2024.
The expert committee has also recommended that the government make SEEEPC datasets available to the research fraternity without revealing any household-specific information.
Of the 243 subcastes, 73 subcastes constitute 96% of the population of Telangana. These include 10 subcastes of Scheduled Castes, seven subcastes of Scheduled Tribes, 45 subcastes of Backward Classes and 11 subcastes of Other Castes, the expert committee revealed on Thursday.
“The Composite Backwardness Index will be a numerical and objective measure of the relative backwardness of each subcaste computed through a quartile-based statistical analysis using all the parameters of the SEEEPC data,” the expert committee said.
The committee is includes retired Supreme Court Justice Sudarshan Reddy as chairman, writer and academic Kancha Ilaiah as vice chairman and Praveen Chakravarthy as member convener.
The 43 parameters used to measure backwardness will include social circumstances, educational background, living standards, occupation, income, movable and immovable assets, and access to banking and finance, the committee said. The parameters were adopted by striking a parallel with the Mandal Commission Report, which had used 11 parameters to compute relative backwardness, it said.
The Telangana caste survey had covered 3.55 crore people and collected information about 75 fields, including “social, economic. educational, identity, occupational and living aspects of their daily lives,” the statement said.
According to the expert group, once the disparity is studied, the next phase would include the drafting of a report. “We expect to submit the report to the government of Telangana in a month’s time or before,” the statement read. “The report will present as ordinal ranking of relative backwardness of each subcaste based on the CBI (Composite Backwardness Index) score as well as ranking of each subcaste on each of the seven categories and parameters used for evaluation.”
The next meeting of the expert committee will be held soon to discuss and approve the final report, the statement said.
