A government reviewed study highlighted that the Backward Classes Development Department, tasked with ensuring the welfare of socially and economically disadvantaged communities, faces significant challenges due to the absence of an office system at the grassroots level.
Published Aug 18, 2025 | 12:00 PM ⚊ Updated Aug 18, 2025 | 12:00 PM
Kerala’s reservation framework for education and employment currently operates through two different lists: the State OBC list and the SEBC list.
Synopsis: Without local offices, the department struggles to establish direct contact with beneficiaries, making it difficult to understand their actual needs, tailor schemes accordingly, and create sufficient awareness about welfare programmes. The study pointed out that this gap particularly affects people in rural and remote areas, who remain distant from the mainstream and are deprived of necessary socio-economic support.
Twenty-five years after Kerala set up a dedicated Backward Classes Development Department to uplift its marginalised communities, a government review has delivered a damning verdict — citing skeletal staffing, sluggish grievance redressal, and policy blind spots.
Tasked with serving 90 OBC and 93 Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBC) communities — including some of the state’s largest social groups — the department is run by just 34 officers, raising doubts about its ability to deliver on promises of inclusive growth.
The study also flagged a glaring anomaly: 28 communities recognised as OBCs for jobs remain excluded from the SEBC list for higher education, effectively shutting them out of reservation benefits in universities and colleges — a gap critics call a blow to social justice.
The Personnel and Administrative Reforms Department, which carried out the study, submitted the report to the government in the first week of August.
The study highlighted that the Backward Classes Development Department, tasked with ensuring the welfare of socially and economically disadvantaged communities, faces significant challenges due to the absence of an office system at the grassroots level.
The department is currently functioning with a directorate and four zonal offices at Kollam, Ernakulam and Palakkad, and Kozhikode, catering to the needs of communities from the 14 districts of the state.
Without local offices, the department struggles to establish direct contact with beneficiaries, making it difficult to understand their actual needs, tailor schemes accordingly, and create sufficient awareness about welfare programmes.
The study pointed out that this gap particularly affects people in rural and remote areas, who remain distant from the mainstream and are deprived of necessary socio-economic support.
The lack of local infrastructure forces beneficiaries to travel long distances to reach regional offices, often resulting in the loss of wages, increased travel expenses, and disruption to their daily routines.
Students and parents, in particular, face the burden of missing classes or work to address scholarship-related issues.
Regional offices, each covering three to four districts, are overburdened with the responsibility of field inspections, application verifications, and complaint redressal, handling between 50,000 to 100,000 applications annually, along with thousands of complaints.
The workload is expected to increase further when the administration of scholarships currently managed by the Scheduled Castes Development Department is transferred.
With only a Regional Deputy Director managing administrative duties, project implementation, and field activities, there is little capacity to ensure effective on-the-ground engagement.
The absence of a decentralised structure hampers timely scheme implementation, feedback collection, and beneficiary support.
Consequently, the study noted that the department’s intended welfare impact is diluted, and many eligible individuals remain excluded from benefits.
To address these challenges, proposals include appointing one Backward Class Promoter in each taluk (total 78 BC promoters in the state) to bridge the gap with beneficiaries, along with creating additional Assistant Director posts in regional offices to oversee and strengthen grassroots operations have been pitched, ensuring that the department’s objectives are met efficiently and inclusively.
Kerala’s reservation framework for education and employment currently operates through two different lists: the State OBC list and the SEBC list.
While all 88 communities in the State OBC list enjoy reservation in state government jobs, only those included in the SEBC list are eligible for educational reservation in higher studies.
This disparity, the study pointed out, excluded 28 communities, though recognised as Other Backward Classes, from the SEBC list and deprived them of crucial educational benefits.
Subsequently, students from these socially, economically, and educationally disadvantaged groups are denied opportunities that could transform their futures, even as reservation benefits are extended to economically weaker sections among the upper castes.
The irony is stark: Communities acknowledged as backward for employment purposes are sidelined when it comes to academic empowerment.
Experts and social justice advocates see this as a serious anomaly in policy that undermines the spirit of equality. They argued that in an era where education is the gateway to social mobility, such exclusion perpetuates inequality.
Revising the SEBC list to include all OBC communities left out of its ambit is increasingly seen as an urgent step towards restoring fairness and ensuring no backward group is left behind.
The study has also recommended a major revamp in the way the department handles public queries and internal administration.
To ease the burden on clerks—who currently juggle regular duties with resolving a flood of inquiries via calls, e-mails, and in-person visits—the report proposes setting up dedicated Public Help Desks in the Directorate and all Regional Offices.
These desks, manned by trained promoters on a rotation basis, would directly assist beneficiaries, both in person and remotely.
The study also highlighted gaps in staff knowledge of office procedures, service rules, and the “e-office” system, calling for urgent training to improve file handling, register maintenance, and project implementation.
Together, the study underscored that these measures aim to streamline operations, enhance public service, and strengthen the department’s administrative efficiency.
The department, during the study, proposed 15 new schemes, covering areas such as marriage and medical assistance, competitive exam training, skill development, scholarships, traditional craft support, digital access for students, shop renovation grants, street vendor rehabilitation, and self-employment subsidies for the backward classes.
Highlights included establishing post-matric hostels, regional skill training centers, modern weaving hubs, Sree Narayana Guru knowledge centers, and schemes for students from bereaved families.
However, the study team suggested crucial revisions: Rather than opening training centers, financial aid should be provided for candidates to join established, high-quality institutions.
Similarly, weaving schemes should focus on aiding the purchase of modern equipment instead of setting up new centers. Grants for libraries and knowledge hubs must be reviewed to ensure benefits are not limited to a single section.
The team also stressed the need for youth-oriented, contemporary initiatives alongside efforts to preserve traditional livelihoods, tailoring schemes to the specific needs of target groups. Regional requirements should be addressed alongside state-level programmes.
The report recommended that these considerations be factored into the final scheme design to ensure both effectiveness and sustainability.
The report also urged the creation of an integrated, user-friendly mobile application linked to departmental portals, enabling beneficiaries to apply for welfare schemes, track applications, and access detailed scheme information in one place.
It also called for eliminating duplication in educational benefit schemes by implementing all such programmes through the “e-Grants” portal, with API integration to the National Scholarship Portal—preventing the same student from drawing benefits from multiple departments.
In Kerala, the Backward Classes Development Department works to promote inclusive growth for OBCs—such as Ezhava, Muslim, Latin Catholic, Viswakarma, Hindu Nadar, SIUC Nadar, Dheevara, and others—by implementing scholarships, skill training, and financial aid for traditional occupations like pottery, weaving, and fishing.
A quarter-century after its inception, Kerala’s Backward Classes Development Department stands at a crossroads.
The government’s review makes it clear: without urgent reforms, grassroots outreach, and policy alignment, the promise of true social justice for the state’s backward classes will remain an unfulfilled pledge.
(Edited by Majnu Babu).
