Society

Counting 1.4 Billion: India Launches Its First Fully Digital—and Deeply Contested—Caste Census

After a record-breaking fifteen-year delay, India has officially mobilized the largest administrative machinery in human history. The launch of the preparatory phase for the national census, running from April to September 2026, marks a historic transition from paper registers to a fully digital cloud infrastructure. But beneath the high-tech upgrades lies a highly sensitive social battleground: for the first time since 1931, the state has agreed to count its citizens by caste, threatening to fundamentally rewrite the rules of Indian welfare and politics.