The foremost irony of the OBC reservation policy of the Indian state is that it has no official estimates on a basic indicator — the population of the Other Backward Classes and their socio-economic status. The current reservation policy has its genesis in the Mandal Commission report, which famously used the 1931 Census to estimate that OBCs form 52 per cent of India’s population. In the absence of updated national level census data on the population of OBCs, one has to rely on large-scale surveys like the National Sample Survey (NSS) and the National Family Health Survey (NFHS).

According to the NSS data, there was an increase of 5 per cent in the proportion of OBCs between 1999-00 and 2005-6, from 35.3 per cent in 1999-00 to 40.2 per cent in 2005-06. This increase is not because of natural population growth but due to factors such as the inclusion of new castes in OBC lists, increased awareness and over-reporting. For instance, 300 castes and 633 sub-castes were added to the Central OBC lists between 1993 and 2007. Politicisation of the reservation policy may result in the exclusion of the poorest among the OBCs.

While the survey estimates have been contested, there is consensus that these are fairly robust sources of information on the educational, occupational and socio-economic status of OBCs. The NSS 62nd round provides insights into the educational attainment of OBCs in higher education in India. Among adults, about 5.5 per cent of Hindu OBCs and 3.7 per cent of Muslim OBCs graduated from college, as compared to 17 per cent of Hindu Others. Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe groups perform even worse: only 1.8 per cent of Hindu STs, 3.7 per cent of Hindu SCs and 1.2 per cent of Muslim SC/ STs are graduates. It is evident that, among the backward groups, STs, SCs and Muslims are more disadvantaged in attaining higher education than Hindu OBCs.

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