Reservation In India

This paper estimates the impact of education reservation policy implemented in 2008 in India for Other Backward Castes (OBCs) on their employment. Using a Difference in Difference framework, we find that reservation for OBCs in education increased their likelihood of getting a regular job in government sector and private sector by 0.6% and 0.3% respectively. More importantly, it had small but significant impact on their employment in some of the higher status jobs in both the private and government sector. However, in terms of regional variations, we find higher intensity of quota is unable to break the caste- hierarchy in occupations. Longer history of reservation seems to have some positive impact in this regard. Our results give support to the argument that reservation related policies did have a positive impact on likelihood of getting a job and have also been slightly successful in transgressing the caste-based hierarchy in occupational categories in both the private and government sector.