Vol. 5 No. 2 (2021)
Articles

Reservation of OBCs in India-Investigating Caste, Backwardness and Representation

Published 2021-08-07

Abstract

This paper estimates the impact of the education reservation policy implemented in 2008 in India for Other Backward Castes (OBCs) on their employment. Using a Difference in Difference framework, we find that reservation for OBCs in education increased their likelihood of getting a government job by 1.4 percent. Despite increasing the pool of higher educated OBCs, it had no significant impact on their employment in private sector jobs. Across different categories of occupations, we find positive impact only in low-status occupations. In terms of regional variations, states with higher intensity of quota are unable to break the caste- hierarchy in occupations. States with a longer history of reservation perform slightly better in this regard. Our results are robust across several specifications and falsification tests. Our results give support to the argument that reservation-related policies did have a positive impact on the likelihood of getting a job but have not been successful in transgressing the caste-based hierarchy in occupational categories.