OBC Sub-Categorisation is Caught Up in Bad Politics

Context: Despite being a good idea, Justice Rohini Commission for the sub-categorization of the Other Backward Classes (OBC) is caught up in bad politics due to its prolonged extension.

Rationale for the creation of Justice Rohini Commission

• Defining the OBC: OBC in not a social community, it is rather a legal administrative nomenclature that puts together a wide range of disparate social groups.

• 1st group: There are powerful landowning farming communities like Jats, Yadavs, Kurmis in the Hindi heartland, Vokkaligas in Karnataka, and Kunbis in Maharashtra.

• 2nd group: Comprises a large number of numerically small peasant and allied communities such as fish-workers and herdsmen who have little or no landholdings.

• 3rd group: includes artisanal communities like weavers, blacksmiths, carpenters, and those engaged in handicrafts.

• 4th group: are the traditional “service” communities — barbers, washermen, entertainers, and so on.

• 5th group: includes nomadic communities or groups traditionally engaged in socially stigmatized occupations like begging, stealing, or crime.

• Bewildering Diversity: 

• The official OBC list includes groups that are only a couple of steps behind the upper castes, and also castes and communities that are worse off than some Dalit communities.

• Disproportionate distribution of benefits:  

• After 3 decades of implementation of Mandal Commission which clubbed together all diverse groups, disproportionately large share of jobs has gone to well off communities within.
• Sub-categorisation is a simple way to split 27% reservation quota ensuring the welfare of the most backward communities.

• Supporting Legal and Political precedents:  

• The Supreme Court had explicitly endorsed this idea in the famous Indra Sawhney judgment
• At least nine states are already using sub-quotas for the OBCs in government jobs,

Way Forward:

• Appropriate to classify each caste group at the state level: because the socio-educational condition of the same caste varies from state to state and absence of a caste census.

• Insistence on the informed public debate: rather than using the matter as a political tool to gain legitimacy and popularity.