The data from this census will decide constituency sizes, reservation policies, and welfare budgets, basically how power gets distributed in India for the next decade.
We haven't had a real headcount since Modi came to power. Whatever this census finds is going to be politically explosive, regardless of what the numbers say.
Also, this is India's first fully digital census. 30 lakh government employees are going door to door with an app instead of paper forms. At this scale, that's either a massive upgrade or a massive risk.
One side says you can't fix inequality if you can't measure it. The other says putting caste on a government form just makes it more real and more permanent.