The
Mandal Commission was established in
India in 1979 by the
Janata Party government under Prime Minister
Morarji Desai with a mandate to "identify the socially or educationally backward." It was headed by
Indian parliamentarian B.P. Mandal to consider the question of seat reservations and quotas for people to redress
caste discrimination, and used eleven social, economic, and educational indicators to determine backwardness. In 1980, the commission's report affirmed the
affirmative action practice under Indian law whereby members of lower castes (known as
Other Backward Classes (OBC),
Scheduled Castes (SC) and
Scheduled Tribes (ST)) were given exclusive access to a certain portion of government Jobs and slots in public universities, and recommended changes to these
quotas, increasing them by 27% to 50%. Mobilization on caste lines had followed the political empowerment of ordinary citizens by the constitution of free India that allowed common people to politically assert themselves through the right to vote.