New Delhi, June 6 -- Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was spearheading the party's Lok Sabha campaign last summer, when a strategist advised him not to make the demand for a caste census his core agenda. Gandhi dismissed the idea and continued to pitch for one, calling it an X-ray that would reveal the malaise of Indian society.

Gandhi's intransigence translated into a major political victory for his party when the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs decided, on April 30, "to include caste enumeration in the upcoming census". That same evening, Gandhi claimed credit for the move, called it the "first step" and "a new paradigm of development" but demanded that the government remove the 50% cap on caste-based reservation, and use Article 15...