Indian Politics & Policy Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2020 | Page 76

Indian Politics & Policy
of the Commission, himself was doubtful
of the whole exercise. Nor were its
recommendations accepted by the central
government. In effect, the question
of who constituted OBCs again reverted
to the states. 11
In the following years, as we
shall see in the following section, political
pressure continued to build up,
particularly in Bihar and UP, for preparing
central master list of OBCs.
But the issue made a comeback to the
national political agenda only when
the Janta Party-led government was
formed at the Centre in 1977. A new
Backward Classes Commission with
B.P. Mandal as its Chairman (henceforward,
the Mandal Commission)
was appointed in 1978. For determining
backwardness among Hindus, the
Commission considered caste-based
social backwardness as the crucial element,
educational backwardness as the
linked element, and economic backwardness
as the derived element. 12 For
identifying OBCs among non-Hindus,
it evolved rough and ready criteria:
(a) all untouchables converted to any
non-Hindu religion and (b) such occupational
communities that are known
by the name of the name of their traditional
hereditary occupation and
where Hindu counterparts have been
included in the list of other backward
classes. 13 The Commission in its report,
submitted in 1980, listed 3743 groups/
sub-groups all over India as OBCs and
recommended central action for them
with regard to reservation. As the Janta
Party-led government collapsed too
early and the new government formed
by Congress was barely interested in
this project, 14 the Commission’s report
gathered dust until 1992, when the National
Front (NF) government at the
center announced that it would implement
some of the report’s recommendations.
While this particular decision
was enmeshed in the political dynamics
internal to the NF government, 15 a
few points regarding who made up the
list of OBCs are worth noting. First, the
category of OBCs consisted of a wide
array of caste groups/sub-groups for
preferential treatment, but it lacked
centrally identifiable systemic characteristics,
such as social segregation and
spatial isolation, as found in the case
of SCs and STs, respectively. Second,
while most of these groups (listed as
OBCs) comprised those having been at
the lower rungs of the traditional Hindu
social order situated just above the
ex-untouchables—in short, non-twiceborn
castes 16 —many (mostly landowning
middle peasantry) had actually risen
economically and educationally and
also enjoyed high status in the local
social space. And yet, many non-twiceborn
(peasantry) castes, such as Jats,
Patidars, and Marathas, to mention
only a few, were excluded.
In sum, the social category of
what is now known as OBCs is nothing
but a constellation of castes/communities
marked by a lack of universally
identifiable systemic characteristics
and characterized by vast inter- and
intra-caste disparities along multiple
axes—social, educational, and economic.
72