The Mandal Commission

The committee’s tasks included determining criteria to identify India’s “backward classes,” recommending ways for their improvement, examining the feasibility of preserving state and central government employment for those classes, and presenting a summary of India’s president. The Mandal Commission presented President N. S. Reddy with its report on December 31, 1980, proposing methods to help India’s “economically backward groups.”

During the 19th century, different sections of British India attempted to adopt some form of positive discrimination against India’s  downtrodden classes. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, an architect of India’s Constitution ensured that now the Legislature abolished “untouchability” and provided economic and political advantages within a week of achieving independence in 1947, “castes” and “designated tribes” were established. India’s Constitution also permitted the state to make special clauses “for the progression of any backward classes of community members.”

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 

Formal listings (“schedules”) of India’s caste groups that had a “degenerated place in the Hindu larger formation” have existed throughout 1936. However, there were no recognized lists of India’s “weaker sections,” or poverty-stricken or otherwise marginalized people who did not have a “degraded standing in the Hindu social framework.” To remedy this shortcoming, India’s president created India’s first Backward Classes Commission, chaired by Kaka Kalelkar, on January 29, 1953. The Kalelkar Panel published their findings on March 31, 1955, which included a list comprising 2,399 backward castes, 837 of which were rated “extremely backward,” based on caste as the primary indicator of underdevelopment. The federal government dismissed the Kalelkar Commission’s conclusions, believing that the document’s “caste check” would postpone India’s eventual achievement of a lower caste, communist state. The question of identifying statewide requirements for “weaker sections of society” remained essentially dormant until 1977, only when Janatha Party won India’s general elections.

PROCEDURES AND RECOMMENDATIONS 

The Mandal Commission also identified backward castes among non-Hindus (e.g., the Muslim community, Sindhis, Religious people, and Monks) if they had previously belonged to “untouchable” castes before transforming to a non-Hindu faith, or if Hindu clans with same work-related- related names, such as dhobi (launderer), Lohar (ironworker), nai (barber), or teli (oil presser), were regarded backward. The Mandal Official met a statewide socioeconomic data gathering in February 1980, collecting data from the two towns and one urban area from each of the country’s 406 regions. The Mandal Commission was able to produce another all “other backward classes” (OBC) list of 3,743 castes and a far more “depressed backward classes” list of 2,108 castes using field data collected, knowledge out from the 1961 census, numerous jurisdictions’ collection of their weaker sections, and specific observations of Agency participants and many others.

Prime Minister V. P. Singh of the National Front government stated in House on August 7, 1990 that the Mandal Commission’s proposals will be implemented. Violent protests erupted, particularly among the higher castes in north India, who believed that the committee’s proposals would limit their access to education. The reaction to Prime Minister Singh’s declaration in southern India was far more muted. According to the Mandal Commission’s suggestions, the ratio of backward classes coupled with scheduled tribes and scheduled castes already has surpassed 50percent of the overall in certain southern states.

The Mandal Commission might have advised that OBCs be given 52 percent of national government positions. The Supreme Court, on the other hand, has already declared that now the overall share of exclusions within Articles 15(4) and 16(4) of the Constitutional should not exceed 50%.

CONCLUSION

The Mandal commission 27 % ratio for weaker sections, and also the premise that perhaps the aggregate scheduled-caste, scheduled-tribe, and primitive recipients must not surpass 50 % of India’s population, were affirmed by the Supreme Court on Nov 16, 1992. The Supreme Court further declared that “class” may also be used to designate “backward classes” if the social stratification was morally degenerate overall, but also that the backward classes’ “creamy layer” could not obtain backward-class advantages. Children of legal appointees, class I and class II authorities, experts, managers of huge farming properties, including those with yearly salaries of moreover 100,000 rupees comprised the “creamy layer.”