Fake caste certificates are endemic to India. An astonishing number of people holding fake caste certificates to take advantage of jobs and education seats reserved for socio-economically disadvantaged groups such as Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) come to the fore in the media. In Maharashtra, it was found that 11,700 government employees used forged caste certificates to get jobs. Over the past four decades, 1 million people are estimated to have received fake caste certificates (Mahamulkar, 2018; Gatade, 2020). Similar revelations happened recently in Bangalore, where 591 such people got government jobs, some of whom have retired (Mahamulkar, 2018). Various state MLAs and Members of Parliament have come under scrutiny for using fake caste certificates to win elections. For example, MLA Partha Das was found guilty of using a fake SC certificate to contest elections in 2018 (Deb, 2018). It is safe to assume that the incidents of counterfeiting are very high, and many go unnoticed. The Supreme Court has taken a tough stand on not giving security to the fraudsters. It has ruled that where one is found guilty of using a forged caste certificate to gain admission in an educational institution or job, he shall lose the degree or job (Chandrabhan v State of Maharashtra et al., 2017). Despite this, the conviction and dismissal rate in the case is low. In fact, in the case of 11,700 government employees in Maharashtra, many politicians and unions came out in support of them by announcing a rally (Mahamulkar, 2018).
Why fake caste certificate matters: The malpractice of forging caste certificate is a hindrance to effective reservation. Large resources are invested in India’s quota program; Half of the country’s educational capacity and government jobs have been earmarked for implementing social justice. However, fake caste certificates destroy the expected effect of these efforts. They block opportunities from reaching under-represented communities. It complicates the problem of social justice without any solution.
There are strong incentives to produce caste certificates when it comes to getting access to educational seats or government jobs. The cut-offs for competitive examinations for admission to medical, engineering and civil services programs are often much lower for reserved categories (SC/ST and OBC) than for the general category. For example, the cut-off for Joint Entrance Examination Mains in 2021 for Economically Weaker Sections in the general category was 87.88%, compared to 34.67% for ST candidates (Kalita, 2021). Similarly, for Civil Services Prelims, the 2021 cut-off was 87.54% for the general group and 70.71% for ST. This means that a candidate with no hope of clearing the general category cut-off may stand a strong chance of getting a fake SC or ST certificate.
Use of Aadhaar to curb fake applications The process of obtaining caste certificate on paper is tedious. This requires a comprehensive inter-generational record of documents, ranging from certificates of identity, address and various local administrations to validity certificates of fathers or relatives. The documents are also verified by the District Caste Certificate Scrutiny Committees, which go through all the applications and then approve their issuance (Batra, 2017). Despite this system of scrutiny, fake certificates continue to exist, which points to the collusion of such applicants with some government officials.
A technology driven solution can help solve this problem. The first step to address this malpractice could be pan-India digitization of caste certificates and linking them with Aadhaar, as well as creating a database of government officials involved in issuing these certificates. This will provide many practical long-term benefits. First, it will create a digital trail and allow accountability of the authorities issuing these certificates. Second, since family ties and ancestry are required to be proved for issuance of certificates, capturing Aadhaar details of family members will help in early detection of other bogus cases where similar documents are required for verification of other certificates. has been used. Also, for each reserved seat or job, a central database of Aadhaar-linked certificates can help in verifying the authenticity of applicants. Another intervention could be a plan to make publicly available databases at each panchayat and district headquarters for a public ‘community-level’ authenticity check.
Apart from these, digitization will also help the members of each community to understand their representation in different seats and jobs. This will ease the concerns of the relatively well-represented communities among OBCs, SCs and STs.
Lastly, with huge resources being spent every year on reservation, it is important that we make use of modern technology tools along with data analysis to strictly enforce it. It is proposed to constitute a working group for the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes to study the loopholes in the system of issuance of caste certificates (Sharma, 2021). This is a welcome step. The use of digitization in the implementation of our reservation policy will be immensely helpful in increasing the accountability of government officials, removing fake caste certificates and verifying the authenticity of each and every reserved category applicant.
It is time we leverage technology to aid social justice.
Onkar Sathe and Sahil Dev are the Partners and Co-Founders of CPC Analytics, respectively.