Muzaffarpur:
A young boy sits under a tree, scribbling away furiously, tackling his Geography exam.
The answer sheet given to him has a column on it that asks for his caste. He has left it blank. "Yesterday, I filled it," he says, "but today the teacher told us not to.
Till Thursday, students at all state-run schools in Bihar's Muzaffarpur district were required to share that information. Once a national controversy erupted, the state government said that the soliciting of castes from children as young as five would be stopped. It also clarified that a formal circular asking for this mandatory disclosure had not been sanctioned by the government.
The Bihar Education Project which issued the circular asking for caste information says its goal was to collate the academic performance in different categories, so that it could find a way to address the strengths and weaknesses of different students.
But many say this is a crude manifestation of Bihar's obsession with caste, one that's fuelled and exploited in turns by its politicians. Were exams being used as a backdoor caste census, they ask.
''We have asked the schools to do away with it,'' states Rajesh Bhushan , Director, Bihar Education Project.
But sources point out that in schools in different parts of the state, this has been a practice since 2001.