The political response to the caste census data has been entirely predictable: every party has read the numbers and calculated what share of the reservation pie its constituent communities deserve. This is entirely natural. It is also entirely insufficient as a framework for actually addressing the inequality the census data documents.

The census confirms what any resident of rural Bihar or central Madhya Pradesh could have told the surveyors without statistical training: that OBC, SC, and ST communities remain systematically disadvantaged in education, income, nutrition, and life expectancy. The numbers are important. The question is what we do with them.

The debate has reduced itself to one axis: how much reservation, for whom. This is the wrong axis. Reservation in government employment is a legitimate corrective mechanism, but it reaches perhaps eight per cent of India's workforce — the organised formal sector. For the 92 per cent of workers in informal and self-employment, reservation in government jobs does nothing at all.

The communities the caste census enumerates as disadvantaged need quality primary schools, functioning primary health centres, agricultural extension services, credit access, and legal protection — services that are constitutionally universal but practically absent in the areas where these communities are most concentrated. A caste census followed only by reservation expansion is a political gesture masquerading as social policy.