Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) (NCP (SP)) MP Supriya Sule’s recent interview has reignited the debate on whether caste or economic criteria should be the basis for reservations. In the interview, she appears to favour economic grounds. Advocating economic criteria may seem to question the legitimacy of caste-based reservations as such. However, it is often a popular strategy to specifically challenge the use of caste in identifying Other Backward Classes (OBCs), which is the focus of this essay.OBC reservations significantly threaten upper-caste domination, especially within state institutions. This explains the upper castes’ vehement opposition (anti-Mandal protests, for instance) to recognising caste as a source of disadvantage or backwardness for the intermediate castes. In doing so, opponents often downplay caste by prioritising economic factors.In response, the supporters of caste-based reservations usually argue that “reservation is not a poverty-alleviation programme.” Even the legendary lawyer Ram Jethmalani invoked it in the landmark Indra Sawhney case. While this argument does not necessarily set caste against economic criteria, it can easily appear to do so. In any case, choosing between caste and economic criteria has been a central theme in the reservation debate.In this essay, I argue that such a choice arises from an outdated-yet-popular view that treats caste as something independent from the economy. It ignores the fact that caste still determines one’s life opportunities in the modern market economy. In other words, why a person is poor and remains so in poverty cannot be explained without the caste variable.Moreover, a choice between economic criteria and caste is misleading, because economic factors are already part of the Mandal Commission’s criteria for identifying OBCs. However, to better appreciate this argument, one must first understand the distinction between using caste as a unit and as a criterion in determining backwardness. Such a distinction is not always clear in discussions on reservations.Caste as a unit and as a criterionArticles 15 and 16 of the Indian Constitution empower the state to provide reservations to the backward classes of citizens in educational institutions and public employment, respectively. OBCs are backward classes other than the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and the Scheduled Tribes (STs). The identification of SCs and STs was settled before independence without judicial intervention.Identifying OBCs, however, is a post-independence issue that has given rise to much controversy. As the Supreme Court observed in the Indra Sawhney case, the “single most difficult question tormenting this nation” has been identifying the OBCs. A central difficulty is the importance of caste in such an endeavour: should caste be a unit, criterion, or both in identifying OBCs?When caste is a unit, the test of backwardness is applied to caste groups to determine which among them are backward classes. Only citizens constituting a “class” – individuals with shared attributes constituting a group – can be designated backward by the state under Articles 15 and 16. There can be units other than caste, such as family. If the government chooses the family as a unit, the OBC list would consist of backward families, instead of backward castes.When caste is a criterion, it refers to the ritual ranking of a caste in the traditional caste hierarchy. This criterion is applied to the chosen units (caste group or family, for instance) to determine whether they are backward. There can be criteria other than caste status, such as income level or land ownership, to measure backwardness. Thus, opposition to caste as a basis for reservations could occur by opposing caste as a unit, as a criterion, or both.As Marc Galanter argues, conflating caste as a unit with caste as a criterion puts “both uses of caste in some disrepute”. However, the Mandal Commission Report, submitted in 1980, clarified this distinction. It observed that, “being the basic unit of social organisation of Hindu society, castes are the only clearly “recognisable and persistent collectivities [groups].”‘ Thus, a caste is also a class of citizens under Articles 15 and 16 of the Constitution.The Mandal Commission’s eleven criteria, the social ranking of caste being a principal among them, are applied to individual caste groups to identify OBCs. Hence, the expression “caste-based reservations” arises from using caste as a unit and a primary criterion. Opposition to using caste as a basis for reservations is usually against both usages. One of the strategies opponents adopt is to prioritise economic factors over caste.Framework Prioritising Economic Criteria to Downplay CasteNoted civil rights activist K Balagopal talks about the ‘anti-Mandal mania‘ among those who downplay caste by prioritising economic criteria. He points out how these critics, often accusing those who speak of class differences as Naxalites, suddenly discovered that ‘the only dichotomy in Indian society is that between the haves and the have-nots’.It is often through masquerading as champions of the poor that many oppose caste-based reservations. One reason why this strategy is popular lies in the discomfort of the upper castes in acknowledging caste. Such discomfort might stem from realising that their success rests less on individual merit than on accumulated caste privilege. Prioritising poverty allows them to attack caste-based reservations, while presenting themselves as sympathetic to the economically disadvantaged.It is striking that many accept reservations as a necessary corrective for an unequal playing field, yet refuse to acknowledge caste as the very basis of this inequality, especially when it comes to intermediate castes. Put simply, they argue that the key factor determining what a person can achieve in life is how much money they have, rather than whether they belong to a ritually “high” or “low” caste.This framework, which sets economic criteria against caste status, has been employed by the central government on several occasions to dismiss caste as a source of backwardness for the intermediate castes. For instance, it informed the then-central government’s dismissal of the First National Backward Classes Commission’s 1955 report, which had recommended using caste as a unit and a principal criterion for identifying OBCs. This approach is also evident in several Supreme Court judgments.In the 1962 MR Balaji case, for example, the Supreme Court observed that social and educational backwardness is ‘ultimately and primarily due to poverty.’ Further, ruling against using caste as a sole or predominant test, it significantly downplayed the importance of caste in identifying OBCs. It is unsurprising that the Mandal Commission report criticised this judgment as ‘the most conservative’ stance on determining backwardness.Similarly, in 1985, reinforcing MR Balaji’s view, Justice Desai went further in the KC Vasanthkumar case, observing that the market economy had made social identities such as caste irrelevant. Further, he noted that a person’s bank balance, rather than caste, determines social status. This view of Justice Desai is a popular one that ignores the continuing key role of caste in determining economic outcomes and encourages a false opposition between caste and economic criteria.Caste and economic outcomes: A snapshot of access and exclusionThe view that caste doesn’t matter in a market economy assumes that such an economy rewards only merit and efficiency, irrespective of one’s social identities. It aligns with another popular view of caste as an “archaic” religious institution. According to this view, caste is a cultural belief lingering only in the traditional Hindu mind, reinforced by electoral politics and reservations.Social anthropologist David Mosse argues that the enclosure of caste within the domain of religion and politics renders its role in the modern economy invisible. Such an understanding also rests on the premise that the “modern” market economy erases “traditional” institutions, such as caste. This view overlooks how caste is still “a continuing structural cause of inequality and poverty in present-day market-led development.”The present disparities across caste groups, reflecting traditional status hierarchy, in the ownership of wealth, such as land and other assets, mean the marginalised castes enter the market primarily as wage labourers and not as owners of capital. It must be emphasised that these disparities are not just a matter of historical legacy. The way the modern market economy functions reproduces such disparities, despite its supposedly meritocratic nature.For instance, several studies have shown how caste networks operate in the urban labour markets, which benefit the upper castes – with their disproportionate access to and ownership of resources – in securing jobs. These networks have also stratified the market, excluding lower castes from key sectors, vital information, supply chains, access to credit, and other services essential for successful business operations. The usefulness of these caste connections for the poor upper castes cannot be exaggerated.Not just in the formal sector, caste, along with gender, organises the informal sector in India. These identities determine the kind of work one gets, working conditions, and how much one is paid. Thus, contrary to the popular view, the market is not a neutral entity indifferent to social identities. However, as caste enters the market as networks, connections, and resources, it is often not ‘easily perceived‘ as caste. This leads to a mistaken conclusion that caste is irrelevant to how the modern market economy functions.Caste or economic criteria? A false choiceA person’s caste and economic status interact in multiple ways in determining their life opportunities. It is the intersecting nature of such identities, including gender and religion, that ‘give[s] poverty in India its distinctive social face’. Therefore, offering a choice between caste and economic criteria as mutually exclusive categories ignores how Indian society actually functions.More importantly, this approach overlooks the fact that economic criteria are part of the Mandal Commission’s eleven indicators of backwardness. Economic backwardness, however, was given relatively less weight than social backwardness, as the Commission rightly emphasised that it is often a direct consequence of the latter.Furthermore, even after a caste is identified as an OBC, economically well-off individuals (the “creamy layer”) are excluded from reservations. In this way, economic factors play a role in identifying OBCs and excluding specific individuals once they have been identified. Thus, caste was never the sole criterion used to identify OBCs eligible for reservations, though the expression ‘caste-based reservations’ might mistakenly imply that it was.It is worth recalling here the petitioners’ argument in the Indra Sawhney case that the Mandal Commission’s identification of OBCs on the basis of caste violates Article 16 (2) that prohibits discrimination on “grounds only of” caste.The Supreme Court outrightly rejected this argument as “unmeritorious,” noting that the Mandal Commission had recommended identifying OBCs not solely on caste but based on eleven criteria, grouped into three broad categories: social, educational, and economic criteria.Despite this, prioritising economic criteria is a popular strategy to downplay caste in identifying OBCs. This move is often accompanied by other arguments, for instance, that recognising caste merely perpetuates it, or that only secular units and criteria are consistent with the goal of a casteless and classless society. While examining those arguments is beyond the scope of this essay, the continuing role of caste in shaping life opportunities, provides strong reasons for using it both as a unit and a primary criterion.If caste is to be displaced as a unit and primary criterion, a better method for determining backwardness must be devised. Prioritising economic criteria to oppose caste is not such a method; it merely offers a false choice between two mutually entangled aspects and ignores that economic criteria is already included among the Mandal Commission’s eleven indicators for identifying OBCs.Bhimraj M is pursuing a DPhil in Law at the University of Oxford. He is a Gopal Subramanium Scholar at the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development, Somerville College.