What happens when a caste / community classified as OBC advances socially, economically and educationally?
As described earlier, OBC is a dynamic notion. The evaluation of whether given communities qualify to be designated OBC is to be done periodically[6] and if a community advances such that its socio-economic and educational levels are on par with state or district average, it ceases to be classified as OBC. The Supreme Court has mandated that a revision of this list needs to take place at least once every 10 years.[7] As envisaged by the Mandal Commission, and as proposed to be implemented now, the policy of reservations is not the blunt instrument that it is falsely portrayed to be. It is a fine-grained program that will not result in an ever-increasing number of ‘reserved’ places at the table, but will more than likely always stay below the target threshold of 27 percent because it is designed to use overlapping measures of social and economic deprivation and fluid notions of identity and group belonging — dynamic measures that are subject to continual readjustments to minimize econom
