THE FIRST TIME anyone wrote about the need for caste groups to be represented in government in proportion to their populations was 150 years ago. The anti-caste reformer Jotirao Phule described in Gulamgiri the exploitation of the Shudra and Atishudra masses – in today's terms, approximately, the Backward Classes and the Scheduled Castes – by the bhats, or Brahmins, who "infested" the colonial government. "I really do not mean to suggest that the government should not appoint bhats in their offices at all," Phule wrote in his 1873 treatise, "but then it should be proportionate with their population."
Eight years later, in 1881, the British government in India conducted its first census, which recorded the numbers and living conditions of individual castes. Five such censuses would be carried out decennially, the 1931 census being the last. Even castes among Muslims were identified and counted – shredding the pretence, still common today, that caste has no place in the Islam of the Subcontinent. The 1941 census could not be completed because of the Second World War, and censuses resumed post Independence, but now without comprehensive counting of castes.
The misgovernance and corruption that Phule persuasively linked to the caste system, which prevented the masses from being represented in government, continues to this day. But this cause of one of India's most persistent and pervasive problems, and the very issue of the underrepresentation of the oppressed castes, has largely been swept under the carpet. In independent India, any effort to lift up the carpet and deal with the muck has been strongly opposed by the castes at or near the top of the traditional varna pyramid – mostly the "twice-born" Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas – which continue to benefit from overrepresentation in public employment (and private employment too), and to command much official policy and practice.
The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes – official categories for the Dalits and Adivasis at the very bottom of the caste hierarchy – formed some 16.5 percent and 8.5 percent of the national population in the 2011 census. Going by data presented in 2022 before the upper house of the Indian parliament, these groups are significantly underrepresented in the top tiers of the country's central bureaucracy, with respective proportions of roughly 4 percent and 5 percent. For 'Group A' posts, which cover some of the most coveted civil services, these respective shares are around 13 percent and 6 percent. But even that seems generous when compared to the Other Backward Classes – the "intermediate" castes, many traditionally seen as Shudras, that stand just above the SCs and STs in Brahminical belief – who form some 18 percent of the 'Group A' bureaucracy but approximately 52 percent of the population as last counted, way back in 1931. The composition of the remaining 63 percent or so of the 'Group A' cohort has not been revealed, but by any reasonable guess it must overwhelmingly comprise the Hindu upper castes (the proportion of Muslims and Christians in the bureaucracy would be minute). By an educated estimate – based on school enrolment data maintained by the ministry of education – the upper Hindu castes form perhaps 10 percent of the population.