by Carl Haub, senior visiting scholar

Special thanks to O.P. Sharma, former Deputy Director of Census Operations, India, and PRB consultant for supplying many of the facts and main conclusions.

The importance of the caste system as a basic structure of society cannot be overemphasized, although it is poorly understood outside India. Under the Hindu caste system the society is broadly divided into four sects, namely Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra. Brahmins are generally expected to belong to the priestly class; Kshatriya are the military and ruling class; Vaishya eventually became landowners, moneylenders and influential traders; Shudras are those who are service providers such as cobblers, blacksmiths, maids, cooks, etc. and face great deal of discrimination from members of the three higher sects.  Each sect comprises a large number of castes and sub-castes

After independence in 1947, India recognized the need to ameliorate the lot of the downtrodden sections of society, described as Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs), because their names were listed, or “scheduled,” in the Constitution in 1950. Mahatma Gandhi shunned the use of the term “Untouchables” as degrading, calling them Harijans or God’s own people. Today, they refer to themselves as Dalits, a word with Sanskrit origins meaning “suppressed” or “crushed.”

The initial problem was to identify communities deemed “backward” since no comprehensive list existed at that time. The only source of caste-wise data is the population census and the last census giving caste-wise data was the 1931 count. For the 1941 census no such data could be generated because of World War II.  A gigantic exercise was undertaken in 1950 to identify communities who were socially, economically, and educationally backward on the basis of 1931 census data. The First Schedule listed 1,108 SCs and 744 STs.

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by Mark Mather, associate vice president, Domestic Programs

Yesterday the Census Bureau released the first national data broken down by race and Hispanic origin from the 2010 Census.  Here are some of the highlights:

• Minorities are driving nearly all of the population growth in the United States and there are lots of states, including California and many states in the Northeast and Midwest that would be seeing population declines if it weren’t for minority population growth. Minorities make up more than one-third of the total U.S. population (36 percent, up from 31 percent in 2000).  
• It’s mostly Latinos who are driving this population change. Latinos now number more than 50 million. That’s more than double the Latino population in 1990 and a 43 percent increase since 2000. Latino population growth was most rapid in the South, where many states have seen their Latino populations double during the past 10 years. 
• We’re seeing these changes despite a drop in immigration levels during the recession, which reduced net immigration from Latin America. Even if you closed the borders to new immigrants, the Latino population would continue to grow because it’s a young population with a lot of momentum. Immigration has put the U.S. on a path to become “majority minority” in the coming decades. 
• There’s a growing demographic divide between older and younger generations.  We have a large cohort of mostly white baby boomers—now reaching retirement ages—which stands in contrast to an increasingly racially/ethnically diverse younger generation. In fact, nearly half of all children under age 18 are now racial/ethnic minorities. In 10 states and Washington DC, the proportion of children who are minorities has already passed 50 percent (up from 5 states in 2000). About 1-in-6 U.S. residents are Latino, but for the population under age 18, the figure is about 1-in-4. 
• The multiracial population is increasing but still represents a small share of overall population (about 3 percent). Slight changes to the race question on the Census Bureau’s questionnaire may have dampened multiracial identification in 2010. 
• Population growth of Asian Americans matched that of Latinos since 2000, at 43 percent. The number of Asian Americans added to the population since 2000, at 4.4 million, exceeded the increase in African Americans (4.3 million).

Stay tuned for more information. In June, PRB will release a report with detailed national, state, and local trends based on our comprehensive review of the 2010 Census apportionment and redistricting data.