Over 12 lakh SC households in Punjab — highest in country

Ravi S Singh

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 3

The provisional data from the Socio Economic and Caste Census-2011 for rural India released by the Centre today says Punjab has the highest percentage of households of Scheduled Caste (SC) population in the country.

The data is expected to strengthen Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal’s demand for substantial Central funds to improve infrastructure of the areas in the state having high SC population.

As per the data, of the 32,68,562 households in Punjab, SCs account for 12,00,764 with the percentage as high as 36.74. West Bengal is a distant second, followed by Tamil Nadu. Himachal Pradesh has 23.97 per cent SC population. Uttar Pradesh, the biggest state whose social and political dynamics have been substantially caste-driven, has 25.55 per cent. Punjab’s neighbouring Haryana has 22.89 per cent SC households.

Though Jammu and Kashmir has low SC population (9.77 per cent), it stands out starkly with regard to percentage of Scheduled Tribe households (10.97 per cent), which is followed by Himachal Pradesh (6.14 per cent).

Punjab scores high in the regional states having the highest percentage of landless households (45.34) earning major part of their income from manual casual labour, followed by Haryana with 37.92 per cent. However, Himachal has come out trumps in the region with high percentage of households (8.57) with non-agricultural enterprises registered with the government. This must have come as a reality check for Haryana state which had been claiming for long of being numero uno in industrialisation. The latter is second to the hill state having 7.57 per cent in this regard.

The hill state also has the highest percentage of households paying income tax/professional tax (10.50), followed by Jammu and Kashmir (8.71). Chandigarh has the highest figure: 11.36. The percentage figure of Punjab and Haryana are: 6.99 and 6.85, respectively.

The hill state also scores over others in the region in percentage of households with salaried income (33.93).