Caste data in Gruha Jyothi: A privacy leak without a policy

The Times of India reported this week that Bescom, Bengaluru's power utility, quietly included a 'category' column in its door-to-door verification form for the Gruha Jyothi free electricity scheme. After widespread criticism, Bescom clarified that furnishing caste details is purely optional and that field staff have been instructed to select 'refused to provide information' if a consumer declines.^[1]

This is not a story about a single utility's form. It is a story about what happens when a government launches a universal electricity subsidy program without a data protection framework. Gruha Jyothi promises 200 units of free power per month to every household in Karnataka that signs up. To verify eligibility, Bescom deployed staff with the Seva Sindhu mobile app and printed forms. Somewhere in that process, someone decided that caste information was worth collecting.

The mechanism here is the absence of a data minimization rule. In India, the Personal Data Protection Bill has been pending for years. Until it passes, utilities can collect whatever they want, however they want. The only safeguard is public outrage. Bescom walked back the caste question only after social media backlash and a TOI report. But the underlying problem remains: there is no law stopping the next utility from doing the same thing, or from keeping that data, or from sharing it.

Who wins? The bureaucracy that likes tidy demographic boxes. Who pays? Every low-income household that fears losing its subsidy if it refuses to answer. The Gruha Jyothi scheme itself is a lifeline for millions. But the verification process, if not transparent and minimal, becomes a vector for surveillance and exclusion.

The concrete alternative is a data protection law that binds all state-owned enterprises, including electricity distribution companies. Until then, consumers should know that every form they fill has an 'optional' field that may not stay optional. Bescom's helpline numbers (9480816111-9480816114, operating 6am to 10pm) are a stopgap. The real fix is a binding data minimization policy for all utility data collection, with independent oversight and penalties for misuse.