Published Apr 16, 2026 | 11:14 AM ⚊ Updated Apr 16, 2026 | 11:14 AM
Representational image. Credit: iStock
Synopsis: The Telangana SEEEPC Survey 2024, covering 97% of the population, reveals stark caste-linked inequalities. Backward Classes form 56% of the population, SCs 17%, STs 10%, and OCs 12%. A Composite Backwardness Index shows 67% of citizens worse off than average, with SCs and STs most deprived. Findings challenge “poverty is casteless” claims and urge welfare targeting by deprivation.
The Telangana government on Wednesday released the findings of its Socio, Economic, Educational, Employment, Political and Caste (SEEEPC) Survey 2024, a landmark exercise covering nearly 97 percent of the state’s population.
The release comes on the eve of Centre’s expected move to table the delimitation Bill and the women’s reservation bill in parliament, adding critical political weight to the data now in the public domain.
Described by its authors as a “pioneering social X-ray,” the survey covers approximately 3.55 crore individuals across 242 castes and is the first comprehensive door-to-door caste survey of its kind in independent India.
The findings were analysed by an Independent Expert Working Group (IEWG) led by Justice B. Sudershan Reddy and convened by economist Praveen Chakravarty, whose concluding remarks invoke Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s vision of the annihilation of caste through an honest analysis of it.
Backward Classes (BCs) form the single largest social group in the state, accounting for 56.36 percent of the population. Scheduled Castes (SCs) make up 17.4 percent, followed by Scheduled Tribes (STs) at 10.4 percent and General or Other Castes (OC) at 11.9 percent.
Nearly 12 lakh individuals, or 3.4 percent of the population, chose to identify as having “No Caste,” a category included following a High Court direction recognising citizens’ right to live without proclaiming a specific caste or religion under Article 15(1) of the Constitution.
Among individual communities, the Madiga community is the single largest caste group with 36.54 lakh people, constituting 10.3 percent of the population. The Shaik or Sheikh community follows at 27.95 lakh (7.88 percent), and the Mudiraj community at 26.36 lakh (7.43 percent).
The Sugalis or Lambadis, also known as Banjaras, are the dominant Scheduled Tribe group at 24.02 lakh, comprising nearly 65 percent of the entire ST population in the state. The Yadava (Golla) community accounts for 20.17 lakh (5.69 percent), while the Reddy community, the most prominent among OC groups, numbers 17.06 lakh or 4.81 percent of the population.
The total Muslim minority population stands at 44.57 lakh, comprising 12.56 percent of Telangana’s population. Of these, 35.76 lakh are classified as Backward Class Muslims, primarily under the BC-E sub-category, with the Shaik community being the largest identifiable group within it.
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At the core of the report is the Composite Backwardness Index (CBI), a statistically derived score ranging from 0 to 126, built from 42 equally weighted parameters across eight broad categories: education, occupation, living conditions, income, land and assets, gender, social discrimination and access to finance.
The state average CBI score stands at 81. Alarmingly, 135 of the 242 castes surveyed score above this average, meaning they are worse off than the average Telangana citizen. These 135 castes together represent 67 percent of the total population, a finding that challenges any assumption that social disadvantage is a marginal or minority concern in the state.
SCs and STs are found to be three times more backward than General Caste communities on this index. BCs are 2.7 times more backward. On a population basis, 99 percent of STs, 97 percent of SCs and 71 percent of BCs fall below the state average in terms of social development.
The SC Dakkal community recorded the highest CBI score of 116, making it the most deprived community in the state. The BC-A Pitchiguntla community followed at 110. At the other end of the spectrum, the OC Kapu community registered the lowest CBI score of 12.
Communities such as OC Jains (13), OC Rajus (17) and OC Brahmins (22) also recorded very low deprivation levels, reflecting their historically privileged access to education, land and professional networks.
The survey lays bare sharp and compounding inequalities in education. While 56.6 percent of General Caste youth have received English-medium schooling, only 36.6 percent of ST youth and 40.7 percent of SC youth have had the same access.
The divide begins even earlier: one-third of General Caste children attend private schools, compared to fewer than 10 percent among SC and ST communities. At the higher education level, communities such as OC Iyengars and OC Brahmins report graduation rates exceeding 60 percent, while many ST groups, such as the Kolams, fall below 15 percent.
For marginalised communities, state-funded residential Gurukulam schools remain the primary, and often the only, pathway to professional aspirations. The data also reveals a heavy reliance on Urdu-medium instruction among certain Muslim minority communities, which affects their competitiveness in the broader English-dominated job market.
In employment, nearly half of the SC workforce are engaged as daily wage labourers, compared to just one-tenth of the General Caste workforce. Agricultural labour is the occupation of 31.7 percent of SCs and 32.9 percent of STs, while only 5.5 percent of General Caste workers are in the same category.
General Caste individuals hold 30 percent of professional private-sector jobs despite comprising only 12 percent of the population. In government services, OC Iyengar and Iyer communities hold professional posts at six times the state average, a figure that points to persistent structural advantages in public sector recruitment.
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One of the more counter-intuitive findings in the survey concerns land. Scheduled Tribe communities on average own more land than many SC and BC groups. However, this ownership has not translated into economic advancement because the land is predominantly unirrigated dry land with limited productive value.
The report identifies a significant historical shift: land ownership is no longer the primary driver of upward mobility. Education has replaced it.
While communities such as OC Reddys own a share of land nearly three times their population share, some BC communities with low land ownership, such as the Goldsmith community, have achieved higher development scores through education and urban professionalisation.
The data makes clear that the nature of assets matters as much as their quantity.
The report directly and empirically tests the popular hypothesis that poverty has no caste. To do so, the IEWG isolated only households earning below Rs 1 lakh annually and examined their CBI scores across caste groups.
The finding is unambiguous. Among the extreme poor, caste-based disparities remain just as pronounced as they are among higher-income groups. A poor SC family carries a CBI score of 49, more than three times the score of 16 recorded for a poor General Caste family at the same income level.
A low-income SC household is significantly more likely to face disadvantage in education, housing and social mobility than a General Caste household at the same income. The survey concludes that social identity remains a fundamental barrier to development even when income is removed as a variable, directly contradicting the argument that economic uplift alone is sufficient to address inequality.
The report also functions as a critical audit of existing welfare delivery. It finds that 30 percent of the state’s welfare expenditure is currently flowing to caste groups that are less backward than the state average.
Agriculture-linked schemes such as Rythu Bharosa and free power disproportionately benefit General Caste and land-owning BC communities, while social safety nets such as free bus travel for women and government housing are more effectively targeted, with SCs comprising 20-25 percent of beneficiaries.
The IEWG recommends moving away from a population-share model of welfare distribution towards one that is proportional to the degree of backwardness, so that resources flow most heavily toward the most deprived communities first.
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Among the 12 lakh people who identified as having no caste, over 73 percent reside within Greater Hyderabad’s municipal limits, and more than 86 percent live in the broader Hyderabad metropolitan region.
The group has disproportionately high representation in software and BPO sectors (9.9 percent), medicine (5.8 percent) and senior government services including IAS and IPS cadres (22.9 percent). Their CBI score of 48 is well below the state average of 81.
Yet the survey reveals a striking contradiction. Despite publicly rejecting caste identity, 43 percent of this group still hold a caste certificate, and 13.5 percent have previously accessed reservation benefits.
The IEWG notes that caste detachment typically occurs only after individuals have already secured a significant degree of economic and educational privilege. The category, in effect, represents those who no longer need caste as a social safety net and have chosen to step away from it once that security was no longer necessary.
Telangana Minister Vakiti Srihari called the public release of the caste data historic, describing it as a reinforcement of transparency and social justice. He said the release would expose the gap between the rhetoric and the reality of parties that have spoken about social justice for decades without acting on it.
Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy oversaw the survey exercise, which the government says is aligned with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s push for a national caste census. The government has indicated that it plans to implement targeted welfare measures by 2025 under a proposed “Samajika Nyayam 2.0” or Social Justice 2.0 framework, with a 42 percent reservation for BC communities in education and employment under consideration.
The IEWG has recommended making the aggregate data fully public to enable further independent research and policy debate. As convenor Praveen Chakravarty noted, the survey provides the factual foundation for moving toward a model of governance where the state can deliver resources directly into the hands of those who need them most, calibrated not by political convenience but by empirical deprivation.
