Who are the OBCs? Social and Educational Backwardness in India

Walk into almost any government office, college admission portal, or competitive exam form in India, and you will see four broad categories listed: General, SC, ST, and OBC. The last one – Other Backward Classes – is the largest and arguably the most misunderstood. It covers more than half the country’s population, yet the term itself is vague by design. Who exactly are the OBCs? Why are they grouped together when they are so different from one another? And how did a single commission report end up reshaping Indian politics for decades? This post unpacks all of it.

Who are the OBCs?
How OBCs are identified
Why OBCs are a heterogeneous group
The agrarian castes and their rise
From economic power to political voice
The Mandal Commission and the turning point of 1990
Why the number was 27%, not 52%
The explosive implementation
Key issues facing OBCs today
Demands for inclusion in the OBC category
Subdivision of the OBC quota
The creamy layer question
Recognition of cultural symbols
Why OBCs matter to Indian politics

Who are the OBCs?

The Other Backward Classes are a collection of social groups officially classified by the government as “educationally or socially backward”. They form one of the main official categories of the population, alongside the General (forward) castes, the Scheduled Castes, and the Scheduled Tribes.

The key word here is backwardness, not untouchability. This is what separates OBCs from Scheduled Castes. SCs historically suffered the practice of untouchability and the most extreme forms of social exclusion. OBCs, by contrast, did not face untouchability, but they were still disadvantaged in two specific ways: socially, because of their lower position in the traditional caste hierarchy, and educationally, because of poor access to schooling and higher education over generations.

Interestingly, the Constitution never uses the phrase “OBC” itself. It refers instead to “socially and educationally backward classes” (SEBCs), and “OBC” became the common shorthand for these groups. There is also no single fixed definition – the list of which castes count as OBC is dynamic, with communities added or removed over time depending on social, educational, and economic factors. [Image: A simple chart showing India’s four official population categories – General, OBC, SC, and ST – with OBC as the largest segment]

How OBCs are identified

Identifying who qualifies as backward is not a casual judgement. The framework most commonly used was built by the Mandal Commission, which worked out eleven indicators spread across three dimensions – social, educational, and economic. A community’s position in the caste hierarchy, its literacy and school dropout rates, and its economic dependence on manual or traditional labour all fed into the assessment.

There are actually two OBC lists running in parallel. A Central list, used for central government jobs and institutions, and a State list, used for benefits offered by the respective state government. A caste recognised as OBC in one state may not appear on the list in another, which is why OBC status is so closely tied to region.

Why OBCs are a heterogeneous group

The single biggest thing to understand about OBCs is that they are not one community. They are an umbrella covering hundreds of castes with very different histories, occupations, and levels of prosperity. Calling them all “backward” hides enormous internal variety.

Broadly, the OBC umbrella includes land-owning castes who control significant agricultural land, intermediate or middle castes who traditionally cultivated land as peasants, and service and artisan castes tied to traditional occupations such as pottery, weaving, oil-pressing, or barbering. A prosperous farming family and a struggling artisan household can both fall under the same OBC label, even though their everyday realities are worlds apart.

The agrarian castes and their rise

Some OBC communities became genuinely powerful over the second half of the twentieth century. Castes like the Yadavs, Kurmis, Koeris, Jats, and Lodhs in the north, the Marathas in Maharashtra, the Lingayats and Vokkaligas in Karnataka, and the Reddys and Kammas in the south emerged as the dominant landholding groups in their regions. Two policy shifts powered this transformation.

First came land reforms. The abolition of the zamindari system handed land ownership to the tenants who actually farmed it. In Bihar, for example – the first state to abolish zamindari in 1950 – the benefits of redistribution were largely reaped by those who already owned some land, mainly the upper OBCs.

Second came the Green Revolution. These newly landed middle castes adopted modern seeds, fertilisers, irrigation, and cheap credit, and turned their holdings into productive commercial farms. Sociologists Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph famously labelled this rising class of prosperous mid-sized farmers the “bullock capitalists”. As the old upper-caste landlords declined, these agrarian OBCs became the most powerful groups in rural society – and that economic strength soon translated into political ambition. [Image: A photograph of agricultural fields with a tractor, representing Green Revolution-era farming]

From economic power to political voice

Once these communities had land and money, they began demanding political representation to match. The Triveni Sangh – an early alliance of Yadavs, Kurmis, and Koeris in 1930s Bihar – was a precursor to the backward-class movements that followed. By the 1990s, leaders drawn from these castes were running state governments across north India. The rise of OBC-based and regional parties turned caste from a quiet social fact into the central organising principle of state politics.

The Mandal Commission and the turning point of 1990

No discussion of OBCs is complete without the Mandal Commission. Formally called the Second Backward Classes Commission, it was set up in 1979 under the chairmanship of B. P. Mandal, a former Chief Minister of Bihar. Its job, under Article 340 of the Constitution, was to identify the socially and educationally backward classes and recommend ways to help them advance.

The Commission submitted its report in 1980. It identified 3,743 castes as socially and educationally backward and estimated that OBCs made up around 52% of India’s population. Its headline recommendation was a 27% reservation for OBCs in central government jobs and public sector employment, along with reservations in higher education.

Why the number was 27%, not 52%

If OBCs were half the population, why was the quota set at only 27%? The answer lies in an earlier Supreme Court ruling. In the M. R. Balaji v. State of Mysore case of 1963, the court had set a 50% ceiling on total reservations. With SCs and STs already holding 22.5%, the OBC figure was capped at 27% so that the combined total stayed just under that limit, at 49.5%.

The explosive implementation

The report sat unimplemented for nearly a decade. Then, on 7 August 1990, Prime Minister V. P. Singh announced that his government would implement the Mandal recommendations. The decision triggered widespread protests, especially among upper-caste students in north Indian universities who feared shrinking opportunities. Critics argued that the policy would dilute merit; supporters saw it as overdue justice for the majority of Indians. Political scientist Yogendra Yadav later described the political churn it set off as the “Second Democratic Upsurge”.

The legal battle ended in 1992. In the landmark Indra Sawhney v. Union of India case, the Supreme Court upheld the 27% reservation for OBCs, accepting that caste can be a valid indicator of social and educational backwardness. But it added two crucial conditions: the 50% cap on total reservations must generally hold, and the creamy layer – the wealthier and more advanced individuals within OBC communities – must be excluded from benefits.

Key issues facing OBCs today

OBC politics did not end with Mandal. Several live debates continue to shape policy and elections.

Demands for inclusion in the OBC category

Because OBC status brings reservations in jobs and education, many communities actively campaign to be added to the list. Some agitations are large and politically charged, with groups arguing that their economic decline qualifies them for backward status. The NCBC counts over 2,500 OBC castes nationally, and the list keeps growing as new claims are accepted.

Subdivision of the OBC quota

This is perhaps the sharpest internal debate. The 27% quota treats all OBCs as a single block, but the benefits have not been shared evenly. The Justice Rohini Commission, set up in 2017 to study sub-categorisation, found that roughly 97% of reservation benefits went to just about 25% of OBC castes, while close to a thousand communities had little or no representation in central jobs and colleges.

The proposed solution is sub-categorisation – dividing the 27% quota into smaller buckets so the most backward sub-castes get a protected share, rather than competing on equal footing with dominant, well-organised OBC groups. The Rohini Commission submitted its report to the President in 2023, though its findings are yet to be fully acted upon. The idea mirrors the older concept of “Most Backward Classes” or Extremely Backward Classes that several states already use within their own OBC lists.

The creamy layer question

Linked to this is the creamy layer rule. To stop the wealthiest OBC families from cornering quotas, those above a certain threshold are excluded. The criteria, based on the Justice Ram Nandan Prasad Committee recommendations, currently set the income limit at ₹8 lakh per year, excluding salary and agricultural income, alongside conditions tied to a parent’s official rank. Where exactly to draw this line, and whether it should be revised upward, remains contested.

Recognition of cultural symbols

Beyond quotas, many OBC communities seek recognition of their distinct identity – their festivals, heroes, history, and pride in their traditional occupations. Demands to honour community icons, name institutions after them, or reclaim a more dignified social standing are part of a broader assertion that backwardness should not mean cultural invisibility. This dimension of OBC politics is about dignity and self-respect, not just material benefits.

Why OBCs matter to Indian politics

The OBC category sits at the intersection of caste, class, and democracy. These communities make up the largest share of voters in most states, and parties cannot ignore them. The lasting effect of the Mandal moment was to make caste-based claims a normal and central part of democratic competition. Today, debates over a nationwide caste census, the future of sub-categorisation, and the limits of reservation all circle back to one basic question – how to fairly serve a category so large and so internally diverse that it almost defies a single definition.

What do you think? If the OBC label covers everyone from prosperous landowning farmers to struggling artisans, is a single 27% quota the right tool – or does real fairness require breaking it into smaller, targeted shares? And as some OBC communities grow more powerful, how should policy decide when a group no longer needs backward-class protection?

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Table of Contents

Who are the OBCs? 🔗

How OBCs are identified 🔗

Why OBCs are a heterogeneous group 🔗

The agrarian castes and their rise 🔗

From economic power to political voice 🔗

The Mandal Commission and the turning point of 1990 🔗

Why the number was 27%, not 52% 🔗

The explosive implementation 🔗

Key issues facing OBCs today 🔗

Demands for inclusion in the OBC category 🔗

Subdivision of the OBC quota 🔗

The creamy layer question 🔗

Recognition of cultural symbols 🔗

Why OBCs matter to Indian politics 🔗