# India will conduct its first official caste census since independence, a move likely to have far-reaching consequences for its politics and contentious affirmative action policies. Caste remains a crucial determinant of one’s station in life in India, with higher castes the beneficiaries of ingrained cultural privileges and lower castes suffering entrenched discrimination, and a rigid divide between both. More than two-thirds of India’s 1.4-billion people are estimated to be on the lower rungs of a millennia-old social hierarchy that divides Hindus by function and social standing.
India to conduct first caste census since independence