Scheduled Castes, Tribes, and OBCs are often clubbed together, but they are culturally diverse and structurally stratified in India. Within a single category, there might be a numerically dominant group, educationally developed, and financially stable than others.
Published Aug 05, 2025 | 5:00 PM ⚊ Updated Aug 05, 2025 | 5:00 PM
Representative image.
Synopsis: The reservation played a vital role in the redistribution of resources to the needy. To uplift the under-represented or non-represented OBC communities to participate in mainstream functions, it is necessary to raise the 50 percent ceiling.
Thursday, 31 July 2025, marked the second anniversary of the Rohini Commission submitting its report on the sub-categorisation of Other Backward Classes (OBC) to the President. Since its submission, not much has happened from the government’s side, despite the report’s veracity being under a cloud of doubt.
The upcoming Bihar Assembly elections have influenced several key decisions of the NDA government at the Centre, of which the Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal (United) is now a key ally. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s U-turn on the caste census is a prime example.
It has been decided that India’s 2027 Census, starting April 2026, will be digital, featuring caste enumeration after 90 years. It brings the Rohini Commission back into focus, as the implementation of its report may influence the existing arrangements and livelihoods of a major chunk of the population.
The NDA government constituted the OBC commission with Justice G Rohini, former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, as its Chairperson through a notification on 2 October 2017.
The commission was tasked with studying various castes in the central OBC list and examining the extent of inequitable distribution of reservation benefits among the OBCs. It was also asked to recommend a mechanism, criteria, norms, and scientific parameters for sub-categorisation of OBCs.
OBC commissions and reservations were peculiar in independent India. Despite the OBCs’ numerical superiority, their historical backwardness and financial dependence were largely ignored. However, Article 340 of the Constitution empowered the President to appoint a commission to investigate the conditions of socially and educationally backward classes and also identify the shortcomings — financial, educational, and social — of the communities. The commissions may recommend measures to improve the conditions.
However, Indian leaders handicapped the OBC by discontinuing the practice of counting their population in the decadal census exercise from 1951. To date, the Union and state governments largely depend on the almost a-century-old 1931 census for the OBC profile.
The Nehru government appointed the first OBC commission under Kaka Kalelkar (Dattatreya Balkrishna Kalelkar) in 1953. The commission acknowledged the role of the caste system in India, which created a layer of OBC, and identified 2,399 communities as backward classes. It further recommended 70 percent reservation for the OBCs, and to conduct a caste census in 1961. The government, however, kept the recommendation on hold without initiating any action to address the issues of the OBCs.
The second OBC commission became the trajectory for Indian mainstream policies for decades. Post emergency, the Janata Party-led coalition (of which DMK played an active role) government constituted the OBC commission, with the renowned parliamentarian, BP Mandal, as its chairman in 1979.
The commission travelled the country extensively to study the conditions of OBC and met various stakeholders and gathered information on the socio-economic and political status of the majority of Indians. When the commission submitted its reports, the government at the Centre had changed, and Indira Gandhi returned as the prime minister. The report was set aside for decades without making any decision.
In August 1990, the then-prime minister, VP Singh, decided to implement the Mandal Commission report, submitted to the government a decade ago. The National Front government’s decision to provide 27 percent reservation for OBCs sparked fierce protests in North India. Parliament witnessed fierce debates as many argued that the government’s decision would break India along caste lines. Those who backed the government saw it as a lifeline for OBCs to break the existing social hierarchy and wield power to uplift the backward classes.
Though the Bill to implement reservation was passed, it ran into legal trouble with Advocate Indra Sawhney challenging the government’s order in the Supreme Court. On 16 November 1992, the apex court gave its verdict in favour of the government.
The 1990s saw India embracing liberalisation, privatisation, and globalisation, which fundamentally changed the country’s economy. The decade also saw OBCs in India’s power dynamics. However, the 50 percent quota ceiling — which the Supreme Court upheld in its Mandal verdict — applied only to government jobs. The reservation was extended to academic institutes only in 2007, six decades after India gained independence.
Though a reservation was accorded, the level of implementation remained debatable. The representation of OBCs in academically higher institutions and administratively key positions in government offices was well below the recommended 27 percent. The numerically lesser
forward communities enjoy an absolute share in the Union administration’s key posts and tier-1 institutes, undermining the constitutionally guaranteed social justice.
In this background, the Narendra Modi-led NDA government announced the third OBC commission headed by Justice (Retd) G Rohini in 2017. The four-member panel was formed to ensure a more equitable distribution of reservation benefits among OBCs. It was asked to suggest a scientific formula to sub-classify the OBCs, based on their social, educational, and economic status, and representations in their respective quotas.
Scheduled Castes, Tribes, and OBCs are often clubbed together, but they are culturally diverse and structurally stratified in India. Within a single category, there might be a numerically dominant group, educationally developed, and financially stable than others. This argument was extensively discussed in the recent Supreme Court judgement on sub-categorising the SC/ST and internal quota case. It is high time that the government revamped its existing reservation setups and other arrangements to align them with ground realities. This exercise should be backed by scientific data.
Without understanding the reality, governments cannot take affirmative actions to accommodate and uplift the suppressed communities, as India is still using the 1931 census for OBC mapping. The Rohini Commission was in office for six years and had 14 extensions, but lacked the much-needed data.
Despite frequent requests, the commission was denied access to the crucial data for a better understanding of existing caste dynamics and to get a clear picture of reservation and its targeted beneficiaries.
It is worth noting that under Prime Minister Modi, the BJP broke the narrative of being an upper-caste dominated party. It inducted more non-upper-caste leaders in key positions, which were traditionally occupied by elite groups. Its impact was felt during the past few elections.
According to Lokniti’s National Election Studies, the BJP has made inroads into the OBC vote bank. When the Opposition took social justice as a weapon against the BJP, it attempted to weaken its foundation by focusing on under-represented OBC groups. It diluted the Opposition’s efforts to consolidate the OBCs against the BJP.
Beyond the recommendations and their implications, the methods and manner the Justice Rohini Commission employed raise questions on the report’s reliability and veracity. However, the commission analysed data from the Union government on its employees’ profiles and recruitment agencies’ records to arrive at conclusions.
According to media reports, the commission found that out of nearly 6,000 groups within OBC, only 40 communities got 50 percent of reservation benefits for admission in Central educational institutions and recruitment to civil services. It also found that close to 20 percent of OBC communities did not get quota benefits between 2014 and 2018.
The commission recommended methods to sub-categorise the OBC list with varying degrees, based on their socio-economic-political status. But the recommendations and findings were kept in cold storage.
The concept of sub-categorising is not new in the Indian political landscape. States such as Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Bihar, and Tamil Nadu, and others had already made such arrangements, classifying them as Most Backward, Economically Backward, and others. This was to list the most vulnerable groups within OBCs and allot appropriate reservations for them.
The Union government may now go the extra mile to ensure social justice across the spectrum by initiating necessary actions. The government must first conduct a status check on existing OBC reservations in all its domains, especially in tier-1 educational institutes such as IITs, IIMs, IISs, and other institutes, where OBC quotas are kept unfilled. It must rectify the issues about the unfilled OBC vacancies and take appropriate steps to ensure fair representation in such educational institutions.
The upcoming census must include a well-structured questionnaire to study the OBC communities’ socio-economic-political landscape beyond counting their heads in the family. For this task, the government could use the Rohini Commission findings and methods to learn the challenges in identifying grey areas. The 27 percent quota for OBCs and the 50 percent cap on reservation decided almost 30 years ago must be the Laxmana Reka for governments. The growing demand to increase the 50 percent cap highlights political necessity.
In the last general election, the INDIA bloc demanded a caste-based census and promised to increase the 50 percent reservation cap, which it perceived as decisive plans to break the country from the Hindutva groups. Now, the Union government is making bold steps to raise the ceiling of 50 percent and accommodate an adequate proportion of OBCs and other vulnerable communities.
Without making comprehensive arrangements and only restricting reservations to 27 percent will backfire on the government and deeply disturb the country’s social justice arrangements.
The matter is politically sensitive as it was the implementation of the Mandal Commission report in the 1990s that altered the course of Indian politics forever. However, it equally requires urgent interventions to ensure the philosophy of ‘equity within equity’.
The reservation played a vital role in the redistribution of resources to the needy. To uplift the under-represented or non-represented OBC communities to participate in mainstream functions, it is necessary to raise the 50 percent ceiling. Otherwise, it will re-create modern caste dynamics by excluding the vulnerable and suppressed communities from higher education and influential posts.
(Edited by Majnu Babu).
