TG to plan ‘Composite Backwardness Index’
PNS|New Delhi
The Telangana government’s expert working group has decided to formulate a first-of-its-kind ‘Composite Backwardness Index’ using the caste census data to measure disparities across the 243 sub-castes enumerated in the survey.
The expert working group, constituted by the Telangana government on March 7 this year under the chairmanship of Justice Sudarshan Reddy (Retd.), met here to discuss and analyse data collected under the caste survey conducted in the state.
The survey was formulated to study, analyse and interpret data collected under the Social Education Employment Economic Political Caste (SEEEPC) Survey of 2024.
Drawing inspiration from the principles enshrined in the Constitution, the expert working group will formulate a ‘Composite Backwardness Index’ for each of the sub-castes of Telangana.
Praveen Chakravarty, the convenor of the expert working group, said the ‘Composite Backwardness Index’ will be a numerical and objective measure of the relative backwardness of each sub-caste computed through a quartile based statistical analysis using all parameters of the SEEEPC data.
He said the expert group will use up to 43 parameters split between rural and urban areas under seven categories namely social, education, living standards, occupation, income, movable and immovable assets and access to banking and finance to compute a holistic measure of backwardness.
It may be recalled that the Mandal Commission report used 11 parameters to compute relative backwardness of sub-castes.
