Other backward classes

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The term Other Backward Classes ( English "other backward classes" , OBC ) are in India certain government-specified populations understood disadvantaged socioeconomically and may therefore require a special government funding. The term is in some ways complementary to the terms Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes . The proportion of the population in the Other Backward Classes has not yet been precisely determinable due to a lack of statistical data and has been estimated at 36 to 52%.

Historical development

Constitutional mandate

The constitution of India , which came into force on January 26, 1950, was heavily influenced by egalitarian ideas. The spiritual fathers of the constitution, among them Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar , laid down the constitutional goal that the state had to take care of the equality of disadvantaged population groups. In the constitution, the President was explicitly granted the right to appoint a commission to deal with the improvement of disadvantaged groups:

“(1) The President may, by regulation, appoint a commission composed of persons who, in his discretion, are qualified to understand the circumstances of the socially and educationally retarded classes in the territory of India and the difficulties facing theirs Make a living, investigate. This commission may make recommendations as to the steps that the Union or state government should take to resolve such difficulties and improve living conditions. […]
(2) A commission […] so appointed shall submit to the President a report containing the facts it has discovered and appropriate recommendations.
(3) The President should arrange for the report to be submitted to both Houses of Parliament together with a memorandum on the measures to be taken. "

- Indian Constitution : Article 340

Kalelkar Commission 1953–1955

The first Indian President Rajendra Prasad made use of his constitutional right under Article 340 and on January 29, 1953 appointed a commission chaired by Kaka Kalelkar. This commission was given the task of drawing up a list of population groups who were socially and educationally disadvantaged and who were not already registered as members of the Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes . To identify these groups, the Commission based on four criteria: (1) lower rank in the traditional Hindu - caste hierarchy , (2) low level of education, ie literacy rate , (3) insufficient or no representation in state authorities, (4) inadequate Representation in trade, industry and finance.

The Commission submitted its report on March 30, 1955. She had compiled a list of 2399 caste or communities that remained behind, of which 837 were marked as "very backward" ( "most backward" ). One of the recommendations of the commission was that future census surveys should identify caste membership. The Commission also recommended that women should in principle be classified as a 'backward population'. In higher training institutions, 70 percent of all training places should be reserved for qualified members of the identified retarded population groups. Quotas for the supposedly disadvantaged social groups should also be reserved for positions in the civil service. However, there were already considerable differences within the commission as to which groups were really to be regarded as backward and ultimately the final report of the commission was not accepted by the government due to differing assessments on this issue and therefore remained largely without consequences.

Commissions in the states on the situation of the "other backward classes" (selection)
Commission Reporting
year 		State
Kumara Pillai Commission
Damodaran Commission		 1965
1970		 Kerala
Manohar Prashad Commission 1978 Andhra Pradesh
Bakshi Commission
Rane Commission		 1978
1983		 Gujarat
Sattanathan Commission
Ambashankar Commission		 1970
1985		 Tamil Nadu
Havanur Commission
T. Venkataswamy Commission 		1975
1986		 Karnataka

The Indian Union Government subsequently left it to the governments of the federal states to make regulations for particularly disadvantaged groups. The legal basis for this was formed by the “special provisions” in Articles 15 (4) and 16 (4) of the Constitution. The states made use of this possibility and set up their own commissions to draw up recommendations, some of which were then implemented in laws to improve the OBC. This led to a large number of legal actions from people who felt they were discriminated against by the law. Some of these lawsuits reached the High Courts and the Supreme Court . Initially, the Supreme Court ruled in several judgments that the characteristic “belonging to a certain caste” alone was not sufficient for classification as an OBC. In addition, the reservation of government agencies and apprenticeship places was limited to a maximum of 50 percent of the places, since everything beyond that is "excessive". In later judgments, the Supreme Court softened its initial rejection of caste membership as a main criterion, and by and large accepted the extensive overlap of the terms "caste" and "class".

Mandal Commission 1979–1980

On January 1, 1979, at the time of the Janata government under Prime Minister Morarji Desai and President Neelam Sanjiva Reddy , a second commission, chaired by Bindheshwari Prasad Mandal, was entrusted with dealing with the problem of the underprivileged population groups. The Mandal Commission delivered its report on December 31, 1980. For the classification of a population group as "backward", she developed 11 criteria. On the one hand, these were social criteria: (1) if a group was viewed as backward by other population groups, (2) if their relatives were mainly dependent on manual labor for their livelihood, (3) if marriages were often concluded before they came of age, and (4) when women worked more than the national average. Secondly, there were educational level criteria: (5) high proportion of children who had never attended school, (6) high proportion of school dropouts, (7) low proportion of successful school leavers. Third, there were economic criteria: (8) high proportion of poverty, (9) inadequate housing, (10) inadequate access to clean water, and (11) high level of indebtedness to meet basic needs. These 11 criteria were weighted differently. Social criteria were counted with three points, educational criteria with two, and economic criteria with one point. In this way a score for decision-making could be defined. According to Mandal, a group was considered retarded if it achieved a score of at least 11.

The Mandal Commission classified 3,743 Hindu caste groups as retarded. The last Indian census, in which complete data on caste membership had been collected, had taken place in 1931, during the time of British India . From a later time there was no reliable data on this, only surveys on the so-called Scheduled Castes . The Mandal Commission was therefore only able to estimate the proportion of the population groups it classified as backward by extrapolating it to the present and came to the conclusion that around 52 percent of Hindus belonged to the Other Backward Classes (OBCs). For the non-Hindu population (16.16% of the total population), the Commission estimated the proportion of OBCs ad hoc to be the same percentage, i.e. 8.4% of the total population. The commission recommended that Muslims involved in base , unclean work and Christian converts from the Dalit group be classified as OBCs.

The recommendations of the Mandal Commission provided for a reservation of government agencies, as well as study and training places at universities and higher educational institutions for members of the OBCs. Since 22.5% of the positions were already reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes according to their proportion of the population and, according to constitutional law, only up to 50% of all positions could be reserved, 27% remained to be reserved for members of the OBCs.

Dispute over the implementation of the Mandal recommendations

At the time of the Mandal Commission's report in December 1980, the Janata government had already been replaced by a government of the Congress Party under Indira Gandhi . This was not particularly interested in publishing the report of the Mandal Commission or implementing it in a timely manner - on the one hand because it feared the expected social unrest, and on the other hand because the Congress Party had a considerable number of supporters in the northern Hindi states drew from the middle and more advanced castes whose interests were affected by the Mandal report. Even under Indira Gandhi's son Rajiv Gandhi , who served as Prime Minister from 1984 to 1989, the commission report remained in the drawer.

The 1989 parliamentary election was won by the Janata Dal , who subsequently formed a minority government under Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh . On August 7, 1990, Singh announced the implementation of the recommendation of the Mandal Report to reserve 27 percent of the positions in the civil service and in higher education institutions for members of the OBCs and had a corresponding memorandum published on August 13, 1990. As a result, there are massive protests by student associations of the middle and upper castes, who feel that this policy of job reservation has robbed them of their possible government jobs and their future careers. The following dispute over the implementation of the Mandal Report was a leading trigger for the early elections in 1991 and led to a politicization of the members of the Other Backward Classes . Political parties that specifically focused on the OBCs as potential voters, such as the Samajwadi Party , the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Janata Dal and their successor parties ( Janata parivar ) experienced a considerable upswing.

Various lawsuits have been filed in the courts against the implementation of the Mandal recommendations. In a seminal judgment in the Indra Sawhney etc. vs Union of India & others proceedings , the Supreme Court ruled on November 16, 1992 that the reservation of 27% of the positions in the civil service and 27% of the university places for members of the OBCs was fundamentally legal. In the grounds of the judgment, the court stated that one criterion alone (e.g. caste membership, economic backwardness, etc.) is not sufficient to define membership in the OBC. Not only Hindus, but also groups of members of other religions (Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, etc.) should be included in the OBCs. The small group of economically better off members of a generally backward caste (the so-called "creamy layer" , the "icing on the cake") would have to be excluded from the reservation.

With effect from April 2, 1993, the National Commission for Backward Classes was established, whose main task was to compile a complete list of all population groups that could be considered an OBC based on the 1992 Supreme Court ruling.

In September 2008, the commission granted a total of 1963 groups the status of Other Backward Class .

Todays situation

Estimates of the proportion of OBC in the total population:
• Mandal Commission 1980,
• National Sample Survey (NSS) 1999–2000,
• National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) 2004–2005

Although the recommendations of the Mandal Commission were declared constitutional in 1992, the reality more than 20 years later was still far from the goals set at the time. According to information from the Indian government portal RTI, as of January 1, 2015, instead of the planned 27%, fewer than 12% of the positions in the civil service of the Indian Union government were occupied by members of the OBC.

There are still uncertainties about the exact proportion of the population in the Other Backward Classes . While the Mandal Commission estimated this at 52 percent, later sample surveys came to lower numbers. For example, in 2004-2005, the proportion of OBCs was estimated at 41%.

The government was accused of being reluctant to announce the figures for the OBCs for political reasons in order to avoid the expected disputes. In several states, OBC membership has become a major political issue at times. For example, political leaders of the Jats , who are particularly strongly represented in the state of Haryana , have been campaigning for recognition as the Other Backward Class for years . In May and June 2008, the Gurjar community in Rajasthan rebelled in order to achieve a “reclassification” from Other Backward Class to Scheduled Tribe - because they hoped to get a larger share of the state benefices to be distributed, ie job reservations. From July 2015, violent riots broke out in Gujarat because the numerically strong Patidar (or Patel) caste demanded recognition as an OBC.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Constitution of India. (No longer available online.) Ministry of Justice of India, archived from original on February 23, 2015 ; Retrieved on June 3, 2017 (English, in the original text:
    (1) The president may by order appoint a commission, consisting of such persons as he thinks, fit to investigate the conditions of socially and educationally backward classes within the territory of India and the difficulties under which they labor and to make recommendations as to the steps that should be taken by the union or any state to remove such diffculties and as to improve their condition […].
    (2) A Commission so appointed shall […] present to the President a report setting out the facts as found by them and making such recommendations as they think proper.
    (3) The President shall cause a copy of the report so presented together with a memorandum explaining the action taken thereon to be laid before each House of Parliament.).     Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / indiacode.nic.in
  2. ↑ a b c d e A. Ramaiah: Identifying Other Backward Classes . In: Economic and Political Weekly . tape 27 , no. 23 , June 6, 1992, pp. 1203-1207 , JSTOR : 4398478 (English).
  3. ^ A b c K. H. Cheluva Raju: Backward Classes in India: Issues and Trends . In: Indian Political Science Association (Ed.): The Indian Journal of Political Science . tape 47 , no. 4 , December 1986, pp. 473-485 , JSTOR : 41855265 (English).
  4. ↑ KN Gowthami: Affirmative action and the supreme court of india a study for inclusion of minority communities under category of backward classes . May 8, 2014, Chapter 4: BACKWARD CLASS COMMISSIONS - AND MODALITIES FOR IMPLEMENTION (English, handle.net - Dissertation Sri Krishnadevaraya University ).
  5. ↑ P. Radhakrishnan: Ambasankar Commission and Backward Classes . In: Economic and Political Weekly . tape 24 , no. 23 , June 10, 1989, pp. 1265-1268 , JSTOR : 4394921 (English).
  6. ↑ RK Hebsur: The Havanur Commission on backward classes: an analysis . In: Indian Political Science Association (Ed.): The Indian Journal of Political Science . tape 42 , no. 4 , December 1981, pp. 14-29 , JSTOR : 41855107 (English).
  7. ↑ Janaki Nair: KARNATAKA- Fighting for Backwardness- Venkataswamy Commission Report and After . In: Economic and Political Weekly . tape 21 , no. 42 , October 18, 1986, ISSN  2349-8846 (English).
  8. ↑ In the original English wording:
    15 (4): Nothing […] shall prevent the State from making any special provision for the advancement of any socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes.
    16 (4) Nothing in this article shall prevent the State from making any provision for the reservation of appointments or posts in favor of any backward class of citizens which, in the opinion of the State, is not adequately represented in the services under the State .
  9. ↑ a b Nomita Yadav: Other Backward Classes: Then and Now . In: Economic and Political Weekly . tape 37 , no. 44/45 , November 15, 2002, pp. 4495-4500 , JSTOR : 4412801 (English).
  10. ↑ a b Christophe Jaffrelot : The Rise of the Other Backward Classes in the Hindi belt . In: Association for Asian Studies (Ed.): The Journal of Asian Studies . tape 59 , no. 1 , February 2000, p. 86-108 , JSTOR : 2658585 (English).
  11. ↑ Aneesha Mathur: Sunday Story: Mandal Commission report, 25 years later. In: The Indian Express. September 1, 2015, accessed June 4, 2017 .
  12. ↑ Christophe Jaffrelot: India's Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Low Castes in North Indian Politics . Orient Black Swan, 2003, ISBN 81-7824-080-7 (English).
  13. ↑ BJ Reddy: Indra Sawhney Etc. Etc vs Union Of India And Others, Etc. ... on November 16, 1992. Supreme Court of India, November 16, 1992, accessed June 4, 2017 .
  14. ↑ THE NATIONAL COMMISSION FOR BACKWARD CLASSES ACT, 1993. (PDF) (No longer available online.) April 2, 1993, archived from the original on May 17, 2017 ; accessed on June 4, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / lawmin.nic.in
  15. ↑ State-wise number of Castes notified as Backward Classes by the Central Government (as in September 2008). Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, accessed June 4, 2017 .
  16. ↑ a b OBCs form 41% of population: Survey. In: The Times of India. September 1, 2007, accessed June 4, 2017 .
  17. ↑ Surjit S. Bhalla, Sunil Jain: 36% population is OBC, not 52%. In: Buisiness Standard. May 8, 2006, accessed June 4, 2017 .
  18. ^ Siddharth Prabhakar: 20 years after Mandal commission report, less than 12% OBCs in central government jobs. In: the Economic Times. December 26, 2015, accessed June 4, 2017 .
  19. ↑ OBCs make up 41% of population: Survey. rediff.com, November 1, 2006, accessed June 4, 2017 .
  20. ↑ Shivam Vij: Caste census: Why's government hiding OBC numbers? dailyO.in, July 4, 2015, accessed June 4, 2017 .
  21. ↑ Varinder Bhatia: Backward march: Who are the Jats, what do they want? In: The Indian Express. February 22, 2016, accessed June 4, 2017 .
  22. ^ The Gujjar protest and reservation politics. Asian Center for Human Rights, May 28, 2008, archived from the original July 2, 2015 ; accessed on June 4, 2017 .
  23. ↑ Patidar agitation: Uneasy calm in violence hit Gujarat, death toll rises to 10. In: The Times of India. August 27, 2015, accessed June 4, 2017 .