The story so far:
The Justice G. Rohini-led Commission on the sub-categorisation of Other Backward Classes groups, constituted in October 2017, submitted its long-awaited report to the President of India on July 31, after having received 14 extensions in the last six years. The Commission was initially asked to finish its report in 12 weeks.
What has the Commission examined?
The President had formed the Commission headed by former Delhi High Court Chief Justice G. Rohini in October 2017, to examine the question of sub-categorising the over 2,600 caste groups listed in the Central OBC list.
The Commission had as a Member, Dr. J.K. Bajaj of the Centre for Policy Studies with representatives from the Anthropological Survey of India, the Office of the Registrar General of India, and the Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry.
In the notification announcing its formation, the Commission was tasked with first examining how much of 27% reservation (jobs and education) and other government benefits meant for OBCs was dominated by which caste groups.
The Commission had arrived at the conclusion that a small number of caste groups among all OBC groups, were dominating reservation and other government benefits.
Further, the Commission went on to explore ways of sub-categorising these existing OBC groups in order to make sure benefits can be redistributed equitably. This involved breaking up all OBC caste groups into further categories based on how dominant the communities have been in availing government benefits meant for OBCs.
Subsequently, the Commission proceeded to work out a formula for breaking up the caste groups in a way that would make the highest share of the 27% reservation pie available to the groups that have historically been crowded out of them; and the least share of the pie going to caste groups that have so far dominated this sphere.
While the Commission’s report has now been submitted to the President, it has been learnt that the government will not act on the recommendations in it without detailed deliberations with all concerned stakeholders.
In addition to this, the Commission was also tasked with rationalising the Central OBC list by suggesting corrections and replacements in spellings, which will result in minor changes to the entries.
Why are the Commission’s findings significant?
With the Rohini Commission’s findings expected to throw up exact numbers on OBC communities that have availed benefits since reservation for them began in 1992, this data set will for the first time show the changes, if any, in the socio-economic status of OBC communities that have historically been able to avail benefits.
This is significant in light of the fact that the clamour for a caste census is growing louder among the Opposition and several State governments, including the ones run by the BJP, are already finding ways to conduct their own surveys on caste and socio-economic indicators.
Further, the granularity of the data, as envisioned in the Rohini Commission’s report, will inevitably have a direct effect on the electoral mathematics of political parties, where communities that have been dominating benefits are also politically dominant.
This has invariably put the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in a tough spot about whether they would want these recommendations to ever see the light of day - far from implementing them, given that they might run the risk of losing the votes of one caste group or the other.
Why did it take so long for the report to be submitted?
In fact, even in the run-up to the Commission submitting its report to the President this week, the government has been tight-lipped about its functioning.
While the panel was initially given 12 weeks to submit its report, the government, on a six-monthly basis, kept giving it extensions, citing that the Members had sought it.
At first, the government said that the Commission was taking so much time because of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, after that it said that the panel was still working on rationalising the Central OBC list, which it said was a monumental task.
In the last two extensions that were given to the Commission, members of the panel had told The Hindu that their work had been finished and only annexures were being finalised, despite which the extensions were given.
Earlier this year, it was revealed that while salaries and other expenses had been paid to Members and Consultants throughout the six-year period, there was no record of office expenditure incurred in the last two years.
