Last week, as schools closed down for the Dusshera vacation, around two lakh of Karnataka’s public school teachers set out to conduct the widely discussed caste-census. The caste census or “jaati ganati” is a 60-item questionnaire spanning family hierarchy, education and property hierarchies. “One hundred and fifty houses in the course of fifteen days is possible if the network is good”, says Shambhulinga, a teacher from the Koppal district in Karnataka pointing to the man hours required: 10 houses per day for 15 days at the least.

On average the questionnaire should take 42 minutes to complete. He is one of many high school teachers that have been exempted from caste census duty by special request citing the upcoming Class 10 board exams and their availability as impacting students’ perf

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