Caste in new moulds: 

Caste in new moulds: 

Context:

• The Union cabinet’s decision to set up a commission to explore the creation of subcategories in the central list of the Other Backward Classes is a move in the right direction.
• This step has been taken with the proposals submitted by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, the National Commission for Backward Classes and a Parliamentary Standing Committee towards addressing grievances among OBCs regarding reservations in central government jobs and educational institutions.

The need for subcategories:

• The OBC is an umbrella category that, at the Centre, clubs together nearly 5,000 castes that are at different stages of social, political and economic advancement.
• It is a reasonable assumption that the better empowered castes in the OBC list have cornered the benefits of reservation to the exclusion of the rest.
• Thus, the creation of subcategories could go some way in addressing the problem.
• Moreover, in many states OBC lists have already been subcategories and the system has, by and large, worked.
• Besides, there are no legal restrictions towards creating subcategories in the OBC list.

Suggestions:

• The sub-categorisation needs to be done systematically and after rigorous scrutiny of the necessary data regarding income, education, employment etc, as required by the law.
• The process must be guarded from various pressure groups, considering that reservation is a politically fraught subject.