Middle Classes Reservation became one of the principal institutions through which the democratic state attempted to alter inherited inequalities in education, public employment and representation. In Bihar this history is unusually layered. Scheduled-Caste and Scheduled-Tribe safeguards intersected with backward-class commissions, the Karpoori Thakur formula, Mandal politics, a statutory division between Extremely Backward Classes and Backward Classes, women’s and other horizontal reservations, local-government quotas, welfare hostels, scholarships, examination support and, later, an Economically Weaker Sections quota. Across the border, Nepal developed a different but comparable inclusion system in which Madhesi representation became part of civil-service and federal-democratic reform. This chapter is not a legal digest and does not assume that a reserved seat automatically produces equality. Its historical question is how affirmative action changed pathways into education, bureaucracy, teaching, policing, technical employment, elected local office and professional life, and how these pathways helped create new salaried, credentialled and politically connected middle strata among communities previously weakly represented in state institutions. It also asks who remained outside these gains, why intra-category inequality became a recurring political question, and how the shrinking relative weight of secure public employment changed the meaning of reservation itself. 95.1 The Constitution transformed exclusion into a question of public representation The Constitution abolished untouchability and prohibited discrimination while also permitting special measures for historically disadvantaged groups. Article 16(4) allowed reservation in public employment for backward classes not adequately represented in state services; the First Amendment of 1951 inserted Article 15(4), enabling special provisions for socially and educationally backward classes as well as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. The resulting framework did not erase caste from public life. It moved caste into a new institutional language of backwardness, representation, equality and state responsibility. In Bihar, where access to education and administration had long been socially concentrated, these provisions created a constitutional route through which groups could demand a share in the modern state. 95.2 Scheduled-Caste and Scheduled-Tribe reservation opened early channels into the postcolonial state The earliest reservation architecture after independence concentrated on Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Its effects were uneven but historically important: government service, teacher recruitment, technical education and public institutions became possible sites of first-generation mobility. A reserved vacancy did not remove poor schooling, landlessness or discrimination, and many rural households remained too far from the credential threshold to compete. Yet the presence of even a small cohort of teachers, clerks, police personnel and other public employees altered village status relations because salaries, pensions, bureaucratic literacy and urban connections could accumulate across a generation. This is one foundation of the later Dalit middle class discussed here. HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II 95.3 Bihar’s backward-class question preceded the national Mandal moment Backward-class mobilisation in Bihar did not begin in 1990. The state had already experienced non- Brahman and backward-caste organisation, socialist politics and repeated arguments over administrative representation. The Mungeri Lal Commission, appointed in 1970 and reporting in 1976, classified a large set of backward communities and distinguished a more disadvantaged segment. This distinction was historically consequential because it challenged the idea that all backward classes had equal access to political organisation, land, education or state employment. It prepared the ground for a sub-categorised reservation formula before the Union government implemented the Mandal Commission recommendations. 95.4 The Karpoori formula institutionalised unequal backwardness within the backward classes In 1978 the Karpoori Thakur government introduced a graded reservation formula rather than treating the backward classes as a single bloc. The best-known formulation allocated 12 per cent to the most or extremely backward segment, 8 per cent to other backward classes, 3 per cent to women and 3 per cent to economically weaker persons outside the main backward categories. The precise administrative labels evolved later, but the principle endured: numerical and political strength within a broad “backward” category could itself produce unequal access to reservation benefits. Bihar’s later separation of EBC and BC quotas owes much to this institutional imagination. Figure 376 — Major institutional thresholds in Bihar’s affirmative-action history 95.5 Mandal converted a regional struggle into a national restructuring of representation The Second Backward Classes Commission under B. P. Mandal submitted its report in 1980 and recommended 27 per cent reservation for Other Backward Classes in central services. Implementation in 1990 reorganised political competition across north India. In Bihar, however, Mandal interacted with an already mature politics of backward representation. The effect was therefore not simply to create an OBC category but to intensify competition within it: large agrarian castes, smaller service and artisan communities, and extremely backward groups did not possess the same educational capital or organisational networks. Reservation became both an instrument of mobility and a field of intra-backward politics. 961961 GAJENDRA THAKUR 95.6 Indra Sawhney made the creamy layer and the 50 per cent rule central to quota administration The Supreme Court’s 1992 Indra Sawhney judgment upheld OBC reservation while requiring exclusion of the socially advanced “creamy layer” among OBCs and treating 50 per cent as the normal outer limit for reservation under Articles 15(4) and 16(4), subject to exceptional circumstances. This judicial framework shaped Bihar’s later reservation debates. It also made documentation more important: caste certificates, non- creamy-layer certificates, income evidence and recruitment rosters became part of everyday mobility. The bureaucratic ability to prove eligibility thus became a new form of social capital, especially for first- generation applicants navigating complex state procedures. 95.7 The Bihar reservation statute created a durable post-Mandal category structure The Bihar Reservation of Vacancies in Posts and Services Act, 1991, as modified after the state’s bifurcation, established a 50 per cent vertical framework comprising 16 per cent Scheduled Castes, 1 per cent Scheduled Tribes, 18 per cent Extremely Backward Classes, 12 per cent Backward Classes and 3 per cent Women of Backward Classes. The 2002 amendment reflected the reduced Scheduled-Tribe share after Jharkhand’s creation while raising Scheduled-Caste and EBC shares. This architecture mattered beyond percentages: it formally separated EBC from BC and thereby gave administrative reality to a distinction long central to Bihar’s politics. 95.8 Reservation benefits candidates only after they cross earlier educational filters A quota operates at admission or recruitment, not at every stage that produces an eligible candidate. A rural student must first complete school, obtain documents, pay for travel or coaching, learn the relevant examination language and remain available for a long recruitment cycle. This is why Chapters 84 and 94 are indispensable to the history of reservation. Scholarships, hostels, residential schools, pre-examination training and direct benefit transfers do not replace reservation; they help applicants reach the point at which reservation can matter. The emergence of new middle strata is therefore produced by a chain of institutions rather than a single roster. Figure 377 — From affirmative action to new middle-class formation HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II 95.9 Public employment created distinctive forms of security and authority The social power of reservation was magnified by the character of public employment. A government salary was regular; many posts carried pension rights or other retirement benefits; employment generated access to banks, housing, urban residence, information and formal documents. In villages, a teacher, clerk, police employee, railway worker or lower-level officer could become a broker between relatives and bureaucratic institutions. This did not automatically create wealth, but it often created stability. For historically excluded families, the difference between irregular agricultural labour and a salaried public post could be large enough to alter children’s schooling, marriage negotiations and residential aspirations within one generation. 95.10 The “new middle class” is plural and should not be reduced to government officers Affirmative action helped generate several overlapping middle strata: salaried employees, school and college teachers, nurses and technicians, local representatives, lawyers, welfare intermediaries, contractors, students preparing for competitive examinations and households whose first secure job financed the next generation’s private education. Some possess property; others are credential-rich but asset-poor. Some remain closely tied to village agriculture; others live in district towns or migrate to metropolitan labour markets. Treating all of them as one middle class obscures important differences in income, job security, caste network and cultural capital. The more precise historical claim is that reservation widened entry into institutions from which new class trajectories could develop. 95.11 EBC sub-categorisation aimed to prevent stronger backward groups from monopolising access Bihar’s separate EBC quota embodies a political diagnosis: backwardness is internally stratified. Communities with little land, low literacy, scattered settlement or weak organisational networks may be disadvantaged even within an OBC reservation system. A separate EBC category can therefore be understood as an attempt to distribute access across unequal backward groups rather than only between “forward” and “backward” society. At the same time, sub-categorisation creates its own boundary disputes because inclusion in a list can influence education, recruitment and political identity. The state’s caste schedules are thus not neutral descriptions; they are institutions that help organise social competition. 95.12 Creamy-layer rules reveal the tension between group disadvantage and intra-group accumulation Once reservation produces stable salaried households, a difficult question follows: should descendants of the most advanced beneficiaries remain eligible on the same terms as first-generation applicants from poorer households within the same category? The OBC creamy-layer rule is one response, using income and status criteria to exclude advanced sections from specified reservation benefits. In practice the rule also creates administrative complexity and recurring disputes over certificates, parental occupation and eligibility dates. Historically, the very existence of the creamy-layer debate shows that affirmative action can create internal differentiation inside beneficiary groups and that social justice policy must confront both inter-group and intra-group inequality. 963963 GAJENDRA THAKUR Figure 378 — Bihar’s reservation architecture after the 2024 High Court judgment HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II Table 95.1 — Major affirmative-action instruments and their social effects Instrument Primary gateway Potential mobility Historical effect limitation SC/ST reservation education and public first-generation earlier schooling and employment salaried and land inequality professional entry remain BC/EBC reservation state education and widens backward- unequal access within recruitment class representation; categories; EBC sub-category documentation broadens reach burdens Scholarships / hostels pre-selection pipeline helps candidates coverage and quality / coaching reach qualifying vary thresholds Local-body panchayat and leadership experience, office does not reservation municipal political networks, guarantee control representation public visibility over resources EWS reservation education and public adds an income/asset- does not address employment based route outside caste-based caste-reserved groups disadvantage Horizontal cuts across vertical widens interaction with reservation categories representation of vertical rosters can be women, disability complex and other groups Nepal inclusive civil public employment Madhesi, women, different legal service Dalit and Janajati categories; not access to the state directly comparable to Bihar 95.13 Local-government reservation changed the geography of political apprenticeship Reservation in panchayats and municipalities created a different kind of mobility from a salaried job. It brought representatives from Scheduled Castes, backward classes and women into institutions that allocate local development resources, certify needs and mediate with the bureaucracy. Bihar’s local-government framework reserves seats for SC/ST in relation to population and provides backward-class reservation subject to statutory limits; women’s reservation became especially extensive. The result was a new arena of political apprenticeship in which persons without old landed or party dynasties could acquire public visibility. Yet formal office and effective power are not identical, and proxy control, bureaucratic dependence and local hierarchy remain recurrent constraints. 95.14 Women’s horizontal reservation intersects with caste reservation rather than sitting outside it Horizontal reservations are designed to cut across vertical categories. A woman may simultaneously belong to SC, ST, EBC, BC, EWS or open-merit categories, and roster design must allocate the horizontal benefit without treating these identities as mutually exclusive. Bihar has used substantial horizontal reservation for women in state recruitment and local government; a 2025 state order clarified the 35 per cent horizontal reservation in direct appointments for women residents of Bihar. The social effect is important for new middle-class formation because secure female employment can alter household bargaining, marriage timing, investment in daughters and the gender composition of public offices. 965965 GAJENDRA THAKUR 95.15 Scholarships, hostels and pre-examination programmes expand the meaning of affirmative action Reservation is often discussed as a seat or vacancy, but Bihar’s welfare departments operate a wider infrastructure of post-matric scholarships, BC/EBC and SC/ST hostels, residential institutions, merit incentives and pre-examination training. These programmes target the supply side of representation by lowering the cost of remaining in education and competitive preparation. Their historical significance lies in enabling first-generation students to spend time on credential accumulation rather than immediate wage work. Where implementation is weak, however, the formal existence of a quota may coexist with low applicant preparedness. The most effective affirmative-action system is therefore an ecosystem rather than a single percentage. 95.16 The private sector limits the reach of the classic reservation model The constitutional and statutory reservation systems discussed here primarily govern public employment and specified educational institutions; they do not generally impose caste-based quotas across private employment. As Bihar’s labour market shifted toward private schools, hospitals, retail, construction, small services, platforms and migration-based work, the share of life chances directly allocated through public rosters became limited. This changes the political economy of reservation. A public job may become more valuable precisely because it is scarce, while a growing number of educated applicants must convert credentials in labour markets where formal reservation does not operate. New middle-class formation therefore increasingly combines state-enabled education with non-state employment. 95.17 Reservation can create information networks that extend beyond the direct beneficiary The first government employee or university entrant in a family often becomes an information node. Relatives learn how to obtain caste and income certificates, where to apply for scholarships, how recruitment calendars work, what subjects are useful and which cities provide coaching or hostels. Such knowledge can diffuse through caste associations, village networks and alumni groups. Over time, the advantage created by one successful entry can become cumulative. This is one reason reservation’s effect cannot be measured only by the income of the individual beneficiary: institutional literacy itself can become an intergenerational asset that reshapes the opportunity set of a wider kin network. 95.18 Reservation also changes marriage markets and status languages A secure government or professional position can raise a household’s standing within its caste network and beyond it. In marriage negotiations, salaried employment may command high demand, sometimes intensifying dowry rather than weakening it. Educational and occupational status can also create new forms of distinction within communities previously represented as socially homogeneous. Terms such as “officer family,” “teacher family,” “service family” or “educated household” begin to supplement older land- and lineage-based status. Reservation can therefore weaken some inherited monopolies while generating new hierarchies of credential, salary and bureaucratic connection inside beneficiary communities. 95.19 The Mahadalit policy phase made intra-SC inequality a central Bihar question From the late 2000s Bihar’s Mahadalit policy framework targeted Scheduled-Caste communities identified by the state as especially deprived through specialised welfare programmes. This was not simply HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II another vertical reservation percentage; it reflected the argument that benefits reaching the Scheduled-Caste category as a whole were unevenly distributed. The policy shifted attention toward landlessness, housing, education, community infrastructure and access to schemes among the most marginalised Dalit groups. It also generated political debate over classification, inclusion and whether welfare targeting should coexist with or lead toward sub-classification in reservation. The historical point is that a broad constitutional category increasingly had to confront internal social differentiation. 95.20 The 2024 Davinder Singh judgment reopened the legal space for SC sub- classification In State of Punjab v. Davinder Singh, a seven-judge Supreme Court bench in 2024 held that states may sub-classify Scheduled Castes for the purpose of distributing reservation benefits, provided the classification satisfies constitutional requirements and is grounded in relevant evidence. The decision overturned the earlier bar associated with E. V. Chinnaiah. It did not automatically create a Bihar sub-quota, and different judicial opinions raised separate questions about the creamy layer. For Bihar, however, the judgment is historically significant because it provides a constitutional framework within which longstanding debates over unequal benefit within the Scheduled-Caste category may be reformulated. 95.21 EWS added an economic route outside the traditional caste-reservation categories The 103rd Constitutional Amendment created a new basis for affirmative action: up to 10 per cent reservation for Economically Weaker Sections outside the groups covered by existing SC, ST and backward- class reservation. Bihar enacted its EWS reservation law in 2019 for state posts, services and admissions. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutional amendment in Janhit Abhiyan. EWS does not replace caste-based affirmative action; it operates on a different rationale and is additional to existing reservations. Its introduction nevertheless altered public debate by making economic disadvantage an explicit reservation criterion at constitutional scale and by expanding the social groups that engage with quota administration. 95.22 Bihar’s 2023 caste survey supplied new data but also sharpened the representation dispute The Bihar caste-based survey released in 2023 reported EBCs at about 36.01 per cent of the population, BCs at 27.12 per cent, Scheduled Castes at 19.65 per cent and Scheduled Tribes at 1.68 per cent. The survey’s importance lay not only in these shares but in the state’s attempt to connect demographic and socio- economic evidence to affirmative-action policy. Supporters viewed the data as a basis for recalibrating representation; critics argued that population proportion alone could not determine reservation under Articles 15(4) and 16(4). The survey thus transformed caste data from an abstract demand into a concrete policy instrument and a constitutional controversy. 95.23 The 2023 Bihar amendments attempted to raise SC/ST/EBC/BC reservation to 65 per cent Following the caste survey, Bihar amended its reservation laws in November 2023. The new distribution raised Scheduled-Caste reservation to 20 per cent, Scheduled-Tribe reservation to 2 per cent, EBC reservation to 25 per cent and BC reservation to 18 per cent, for a total of 65 per cent, while the separate 10 per cent EWS framework continued. The state justified the change through the scale of social and educational 967967 GAJENDRA THAKUR backwardness and under-representation. The legislation represented the most ambitious attempt since Mandal to align Bihar’s reservation structure more closely with newly measured social composition. 95.24 The Patna High Court struck down the 65 per cent amendment in June On 20 June 2024 the Patna High Court invalidated the 2023 employment and educational-reservation amendments. The court held that the enhancement beyond the 50 per cent ceiling was unconstitutional on the record before it and criticised reliance on population proportion rather than a sufficient analysis of adequate representation. The judgment returned Bihar’s legal framework to the pre-amendment position unless and until higher judicial review changes that result. The dispute is important historically because it demonstrates the continuing tension between demographic claims for proportional representation and the constitutional doctrine of adequate representation under Articles 15 and 16. 95.25 As of August 2026, the 65 per cent dispute remained unresolved in the Supreme Court Bihar appealed the High Court judgment to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court declined interim relief in July 2024, so the High Court’s ruling was not stayed. The connected appeals continued to appear in Supreme Court cause lists in 2026, and public reporting in August 2026 still described the state’s appeal as pending. A contemporary history must therefore avoid presenting the 65 per cent scheme as either currently operative or finally extinguished. Its legal status is an unresolved appellate dispute, and the older statutory architecture remains the safer description of the operative vertical framework pending a contrary final order. Figure 379 — Regional affirmative-action institutions and new middle-class formation 95.26 Nepal-side Madhesh followed a different inclusion path after 2007 The Nepal comparison is essential because Madhesh is part of the wider Mithila interaction zone but operates under a different constitutional system. The 2007 amendment to Nepal’s civil-service framework reserved 45 per cent of vacancies filled by open competition for inclusive categories; within that reserved pool, the distribution included women, Adivasi/Janajati, Madhesi, Dalit, persons with disabilities and backward areas. Madhesis received 22 per cent of the reserved pool. This arrangement cannot be translated HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II mechanically into Bihar’s caste categories, but it similarly sought to alter the social composition of the state bureaucracy. For families in Janakpurdham and Madhesh, public-service inclusion became another route into credentialled middle-class status. 95.27 Federalisation expanded the political meaning of inclusion in Madhesh Nepal’s 2015 Constitution strengthened the language of proportional inclusion and federal representation. In Madhesh, inclusion therefore operates not only through civil-service recruitment but through provincial institutions, electoral representation and debates over citizenship, language and state identity. A Madhesi middle class has grown through education, public administration, professions, migration and cross-border commerce as well as affirmative-action channels. The comparison with Bihar is useful precisely because it reveals that “reservation” is not one universal mechanism: different political systems combine quotas, representation, federalism and social classification in different ways while confronting a common problem of historically unequal access to the state. 95.28 New middle classes can challenge old landed power without eliminating class inequality A teacher from an EBC family, a Dalit police employee, a BC engineer, a woman panchayat representative or a Madhesi civil servant may acquire resources and authority that earlier depended more heavily on land, lineage or established urban networks. This can diversify local leadership and weaken the monopoly of older elites. Yet middle-class ascent also produces new inequalities within historically disadvantaged communities. Secure employees may buy land, move to towns, send children to private schools and develop networks unavailable to casual labourers of the same caste. Reservation therefore redistributes opportunity while also creating internal class differentiation that later politics must address. 95.29 The future of affirmative action depends increasingly on educational quality and the structure of work The number of applicants with certificates and degrees has expanded much faster than the supply of secure public posts. At the same time, automation, contractualisation, outsourcing and private-sector growth reduce the share of employment directly governed by classic reservation rosters. This does not make affirmative action irrelevant; it changes the complementary policies required. Better school learning, affordable higher education, anti-discrimination enforcement, transparent recruitment, apprenticeships, credit and private-sector opportunity become more important if the gains of reservation are to extend beyond a limited salaried layer. The central challenge is to convert representation into broad capability rather than a narrow competition for scarce state posts. 95.30 Reservation changed the social composition of aspiration even where equality remains unfinished Across Mithila, Vajji and Anga, reservation and allied affirmative action altered who could plausibly imagine becoming a teacher, police officer, engineer, clerk, university student, local representative or administrator. The result is visible in new middle strata whose authority rests on salaries, credentials, state literacy and networks rather than only inherited land or ritual status. Yet the system remains filtered by unequal schooling, documentation, gender, geography, vacancy scarcity and intra-category advantage. The most accurate historical conclusion is therefore double: affirmative action has been a real engine of social 969969 GAJENDRA THAKUR mobility and democratic representation, and its benefits have never been evenly distributed. The politics of reservation persists because both propositions are true at once.