Political Rise of Other Backward Classes One long-term development of this period was the rise of Other Backward Classes as a political force. You have already come across this term ‘OBC’. This refers to the administrative category ‘Other Backward Classes’. These are communities other than SC and ST who suffer from educational and social backwardness.
These are also referred to as ‘backward castes’. We have already noted in Chapter Six that the support for the Congress among many sections of the ‘backward castes’ had declined. This created a space for non-Congress parties that drew more support from these communities. You would recall that the rise of these parties first found political expression at the national level in the form of the Janata Party government in .
Many of the constituents of the Janata Party, like the Bharatiya Kranti Dal and the Samyukta Socialist Party, had a powerful rural base among some sections of the OBC. ‘Mandal’ implemented In the 1980s, the Janata Dal brought together a similar combination of political groups with strong support among the OBCs. The decision of the National Front government to implement the recommendations