Other Backward Class
term for socially or educationally disadvantaged group of people in India
The Other Backward Class (OBC) is a collective term used by the Government of India to classify communities that are "educationally or socially backward" (i.e., deprived/disadvantaged). It is one of several official classifications of the population of India, along with general castes, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SCs and STs). The OBCs were found to comprise 52% of the country's population by the Mandal Commission report of 1980 and were determined to be 41% in 2006 when the National Sample Survey Organisation took place. There is substantial debate over the exact number of OBCs in India; it is generally estimated to be sizable, but many believe that it is higher than the figures quoted by either the Mandal Commission or the National Sample Survey.
In the Indian Constitution, OBCs are described as socially and educationally backward classes (SEBC), and the Government of India is enjoined to ensure their social and educational development — for example, the OBCs are entitled to 27% reservations in public sector employment and higher education. The list of OBCs maintained by the Indian Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment is dynamic, with castes and communities being added or removed depending on social, educational, and economic factors. In a reply to a question in Lok Sabha, Union Minister Jitendra Singh informed that as of January 2016, the percentage of OBCs in central government services is 21.57% and has shown an increasing trend since September 1993. Likewise, in 2015, at educational institutions, funds meant for OBC students under the reservation policy were not used properly or were underused in cases of upgrading infrastructure as well as in violation of faculty recruitment of OBCs according to the 49% reservation policy.
Until 1985, the affairs of the Backward Classes were looked after by the Backward Classes Cell in the Ministry of Home Affairs. A separate Ministry of Welfare was established in 1985 (renamed in 1998 the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment) to attend to matters relating to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and OBCs.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Other Backward Class” as term for socially or educationally disadvantaged group of people in India. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as term for socially or educationally disadvantaged group of people in India. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7108582. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1980, 2006, 2016 and 1993.
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This entry incorporates text from “Other Backward Class” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.