How far has India's job quota system narrowed the caste gap?

A long way, but not all the way. After independence, India formalised a policy of reserving government jobs for people on official lists of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, and the system has now run for more than 50 years. Between 1959 and 1995, the share of the highest-paying, most senior government jobs held by people from the lowest castes rose about tenfold, from 1.18 to 10.12 percent. Yet in these top Group A and B jobs, their share was still 30 percent lower than their share of the population.

Government jobs weigh heavily in India: a 2000 report estimated that most jobs were in companies or agencies owned by the government. By 1995, people from the lowest castes held 17.2 percent of all jobs nationwide. In 1990, following the Mandal Commission's recommendations, India added a 27 percent reservation for Socially and Educationally Backward Classes, on top of the 22.5 percent already set aside for the lowest castes. The move set off massive protests, and many accused politicians of chasing votes.

Whether quotas are the right tool is contested. The sociologist Arvind Shah, among others, has argued that reservation paradoxically creates an incentive to keep social stratification alive. Others say caste-based reservation is needed to stop upper castes from monopolizing public-sector jobs, and stress that its aim is adequate representation of every caste group rather than ending poverty. Protests such as those of 2006 voiced complaints of reverse discrimination from castes that do not qualify.

The wider backdrop has not vanished either. India's constitution bans caste discrimination, yet caste-based discrimination, segregation, violence and inequality persist, and in a 2019–2020 Pew survey, 98 percent of Indian adults identified with a caste. The word Dalit, for those once called untouchables, was popularized by B. R. Ambedkar, himself a Dalit, who applied it to all oppressed people regardless of caste.