New caste equations

Empowerment must go beyond quotas

Eleven months after the V P Singh government announced its intent to implement the Mandal Commission report in August 1990, which enabled quotas for the Other Backward Classes (OBC), the P V Narasimha Rao government took the first steps to liberalise the Indian economy. Employment opportunities in the private sector boomed, and government jobs were no longer the primary vehicle for social and economic mobility. Indeed, economic liberalisation also helped increase government revenue, facilitating the central and state governments to allocate more funds for social welfare. The current government, for example, maintains that the beneficiaries of several of its welfare