Twenty-Five Years of Modi: What Has Changed for the OBCs?

— ✍️ Dundra Kumara Swamy

Narendra Modi has completed 25 years in public office since he became the Chief Minister of Gujarat. It is a significant milestone in a political career that has taken him from State leadership to the highest constitutional office in the country. Such a milestone invites an assessment not only of political longevity and electoral success, but also of the changes experienced by different sections of society. For the Other Backward Classes (OBCs), the more substantive question is whether this period has produced a measurable expansion of opportunity, representation and participation in decision-making.

The question of how many people belong to the socially and educationally backward classes has been part of India’s public discourse for decades. Population data, by themselves, do not establish social justice. But credible data are indispensable for understanding disparities, designing targeted interventions and assessing whether public policy is reaching those it is intended to serve.

The Union Government’s decision in 2025 to include caste enumeration in Census 2027 was therefore significant. The Government subsequently stated that caste details would be collected during the second phase of the census, and the questionnaire for the second phase has been released. The debate has now moved to the more substantive questions of how caste identities will be recorded, classified and aggregated, and how the resulting data will be presented.

For OBCs, this distinction matters. The credibility of the exercise will depend not merely on the collection of caste information, but on whether the methodology produces clear and usable data on the size and socio-economic position of the OBC population. If the final data do not permit meaningful identification and analysis of OBC communities, the policy value of the exercise could be considerably reduced.

Counting the OBC population is the beginning. The larger test is whether the numbers lead to better policy, fair representation and wider access to opportunity.

A caste enumeration cannot, by itself, resolve the larger questions of social justice. Once reliable population data are available, they can provide a basis for examining disparities in education, public employment, higher education, public institutions and political representation. They can also help governments assess whether existing programmes are adequate and where policy interventions need to be strengthened.

This brings the discussion to the demand for a separate Union Ministry for OBC affairs. The demand has been raised for several years, with proponents arguing that issues relating to education, employment, economic empowerment, social welfare and representation require greater institutional coordination. The absence of a dedicated Union ministry remains, therefore, a point of debate among sections seeking a more focused institutional framework for OBC policy.

The question, however, is larger than the creation of another ministry. The issue is whether the existing institutional architecture is sufficiently equipped to address the multiple dimensions of backwardness in an integrated manner. A meaningful policy framework would have to connect population data with educational attainment, employment, economic mobility and representation, rather than treating each of these as separate policy domains.

The creamy-layer framework presents another continuing policy question. OBC reservation in the Union system incorporates the exclusion of the creamy layer, and the annual parental income threshold currently associated with the determination of the creamy layer is ₹8 lakh. The broader debate is whether income alone provides an adequate basis for determining exclusion from reservation benefits. Social position, educational access and inherited disadvantage are also relevant to any serious assessment of backwardness. How these factors should be balanced remains a legitimate subject for policy review.

The OBC question, therefore, cannot be reduced to the percentage of reservation alone. The more useful indicators are wider: What is the representation of OBCs in Union government employment? What is their participation in higher education? How adequately are they represented in senior public institutions? What is their presence in Parliament, State legislatures and local bodies? And what evidence exists to establish whether their socio-economic position has improved over time?

These questions also highlight the difficulty of assessing the social-justice record of any 25-year political period without comprehensive and contemporary data. Governments can point to schemes, programmes, reservations and welfare measures. Critics can point to continuing disparities. A credible assessment requires something more durable than competing political narratives: measurable outcomes and reliable data.

Seen from that perspective, the decision to conduct caste enumeration is an important institutional step, but not the conclusion of the debate. The real test will begin after the data are collected. How will the numbers be analysed? Will they inform policy? Will they influence the allocation of educational and employment opportunities? Will they contribute to a more representative public administration and political system? These are questions that cannot be answered by the census alone.

The measure of social justice is ultimately not the number of years a government has remained in office. It is the extent to which historically disadvantaged communities gain access to opportunity, representation and institutions of decision-making. For OBCs, four indicators are particularly relevant: their share in the population, their share in public institutions, their access to opportunity, and the extent to which their voices are represented in decisions that affect them.

Census 2027 could provide an important empirical foundation for that assessment. But the value of the exercise will depend on the quality of the data, the transparency of its presentation and, most importantly, what governments subsequently do with it.

Twenty-five years in public office is undoubtedly a political milestone. Social justice, however, is measured by a different clock. It is measured by whether communities that have historically remained under-represented are better counted, better represented and better placed to access opportunities than they were before.

For the OBCs, therefore, the central question is no longer merely whether they will be counted. It is whether the numbers, once established, will lead to a more evidence-based conversation on representation, opportunity and equality.

That is the test that will ultimately determine what the next chapter of Census 2027 means for social justice—and, in a broader sense, how the past 25 years will be judged.

- The author is a High Court advocate, National President BC Dal and Chairman of National BC Reservation Struggle Coordination JAC.