The on caste census – moving from calling it “divisive” to describing it as “historic” reflects growing recognition that effective governance requires accurate social data. Yet translating this commitment into climate-conscious governance requires confronting how India’s social hierarchies shape environmental vulnerability.
As scholar Gail Omvedt noted in her of caste enumeration, gathering caste information provides a ‘crucial foundation’ for addressing discrimination.
Caste operates as invisible infrastructure maintaining inequality through its invisibility. by National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR) reveals that while the plan acknowledges vulnerable populations, it operates on assumptions that climate actions will ‘by default benefit marginalised communities’ rather than implementing targeted mechanisms to ensure systematic inclusion.”
Caste enumeration enables what scholars call “census-populism” – using official data to build cross-caste coalitions around shared socioeconomic conditions rather than identity alone. Applied to climate policy, this framework suggests caste-disaggregated climate vulnerability data could unite marginalised communities around shared environmental risks, moving beyond cultural tokenism toward material demands for climate justice.
Heat action plans would be required to address that concentrates climate risks among marginalised people. Early warning systems would need to reach informal settlements where displaced climate migrants, disproportionately from marginalised castes, concentrate.
Rather than appealing for inclusion based on humanitarian grounds, they could present evidence of systematic exclusion from climate resilience investments and demand structural redress.
The upcoming caste census creates unprecedented opportunities for climate justice advocacy. Civil society organisations can demand that climate vulnerability assessments incorporate caste data from enumeration exercises. Environmental justice researchers can document how caste-based exclusion amplifies climate risks across sectors and regions.
Caste enumeration would move political discourse “beyond cultural tokenism and symbolic representation to insist on accountability and material justice.” The same transformation could revolutionise climate policy, shifting from abstract vulnerability metrics toward concrete, caste-conscious adaptation strategies.
The state governments that design climate action plans currently operate with incomplete social data. revealed demographic realities dramatically different from decades-old assumptions.
How many other states are designing climate interventions based on colonial-era social mappings?
India’s climate policies will remain fundamentally unjust as long as they operate through frameworks that render social hierarchies invisible. The caste census offers an historic opportunity to move beyond technocratic climate planning toward truly inclusive environmental governance.
Census politics has already begun and is well underway, unleashing political movements that transform disparate communities into cohesive blocs demanding structural change. Climate policy makers can either recognise this transformation and build caste-conscious adaptation frameworks, or risk having climate interventions bypassed by political movements demanding structural environmental justice.
The choice is clear: continue climate policies that preserve existing inequalities through data blindness, or use the caste census as a tool for building climate resilience that reaches all Indians, regardless of the accident of their birth. It is better to have transparent caste politics now than environmental catastrophe later.
(This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
