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On 11 March 2026 a member of the Lok Sabha asked how many Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe officers serve at Joint Secretary level and above in the Government of India. The personnel ministry answered: “Data in this regard is not maintained.” The government that runs India’s largest system of reservation does not count who holds its most senior posts.
That gap sits under a familiar complaint: that reservation is ruining the country, and that in India merit no longer stands a chance. The government’s own records, read together, describe a different country. Reservation in jobs reaches only the part of the economy the state employs, and that part is small and getting smaller. Where the state does count caste, Scheduled Castes (SCs), the legal category for Dalits, hold about their share of the population, thin at the top and thick at the bottom. Private employers, who employ most Indians, do not count caste at all. And reservation in education opens a door; it does not lower the bar on the other side of it.
The figures below come from The Dalit Project’s Data desk, which gathers them from ministry reports, Parliament answers and official surveys.
Where the quota reaches
The Constitution allows reservation in “appointments or posts” under the state (Article 16(4)) and in admission to educational institutions (Article 15). It does not reach private employers, private universities (which the central law does not cover), contract and outsourced staff, lateral entry into senior civil service posts, the boards of public companies, the higher judiciary, or a public company once it is sold. The Data desk’s Where reservation applies sets out 17 such cases, each from the government’s own statement, and finds reservation in seven.
How big is the part it reaches? In 2023-24, government, local bodies and public sector enterprises employed about 57 of every 1,000 workers in India, by the government’s Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS).
That part is shrinking. Among workers outside agriculture, the government share was 12.6% from 2017-18 to 2019-20 and 10.6% in 2023-24. The Central Government had 3,426,018 civilian employees in post in 2001 and 3,099,656 in 2024. Central public sector enterprises employed 1,565,629 regular staff in 2007-08 and 841,000 in 2021-22, and by 2020 contract, casual and other workers, outside reservation, were 35.0% of their staff. In 2023-24 private banks employed 846,530 people and public sector banks 746,679.
When a public company is sold, the reservation in it goes too. “Post privatization, the laws and regulations as applicable to private sector will be applicable to the disinvested Public Sector Enterprises,” the finance ministry told the Lok Sabha in 2022.
Who holds the posts
If reservation were taking jobs out of proportion, SCs would hold far more than their population share. They do not. On 1 January 2024 SCs held 16.84% of Central Government posts, by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), the government’s personnel ministry. That is a little above the 15% reserved for them, and close to their 16.6% share of the population in Census 2011.
16.59%. Share of Central Government posts held by Scheduled Castes on 1 January 2024, leaving out the Safai Karamchari (sanitation) posts, against 16.6% of India’s population in Census 2011. Source: DoPT figures, on the Data desk’s SC representation page.
Take away the sanitation posts, and the match is exact. In the Safai Karamchari posts alone SCs held 36.75%; in the top tier, Group A, they held 14.20%, the only group below 15%.
At the banks it repeats. In public sector banks and other financial institutions in 2020, SCs held 17.61% of Group A posts and 52.92% of the Group D posts that are only for sanitation work, by a Lok Sabha answer from the finance ministry. Among workers cleaning sewers and septic tanks profiled under the government’s NAMASTE scheme, 67.91% of 54,574 were recorded as SC, as the Data desk’s sewer deaths page shows from a Lok Sabha answer of 17 December 2024.
Not every table fits: in central public sector enterprises in 2020, SCs held 14.68% of unskilled jobs, and the table has no sanitation category. Often there is no count at all. The government told Parliament in 2025 that the reports states send on sanitation workers “does not mention the caste details”.
The top is thinnest of all. Senior posts in the Government of India are deputation posts, outside reservation, as the SC representation page sets out. In 2019, SCs held 1 of 89 Secretary posts under the Central Staffing Scheme, 6 of 93 Additional Secretary posts and 13 of 275 Joint Secretary posts. Asked again in 2026, the ministry gave the answer this piece opened with.
The private sector, which no one counts
Most Indians with regular jobs work for private employers, where reservation does not apply and no rule The Dalit Project found requires caste to be reported. In December 2025 the social justice ministry, asked about reservation in private jobs, told the Lok Sabha: “There is no such proposal under consideration with the Government.”
What can be measured comes from household surveys, where people state their own caste. By The Dalit Project’s estimate from PLFS 2023-24 unit-level data, SCs held 14.6% of regular jobs in companies, give or take 1.2 points, against 20.0% in government and the public sector and 19.8% of all workers. (The survey takes the household head’s social group for every member.) The median SC employee of a company earned ₹14,630 a month (about US$180), against ₹25,000 (about US$300) for an employee in the “Others” group, outside the SC, ST and OBC categories.
The gap is wider in ownership. SCs owned 11.4% of proprietary establishments in the Economic Census of 2013-14 and 6.8% of the small businesses registered with the government’s Udyam portal in 2022. The Data desk’s SCs in private employment piece has these figures and their caveats.
The sharper gap is in casual labour: 33.2 of every 100 SC workers, against 19.8 of every 100 workers.
Same classes, same exams
Reservation in central universities, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and other central institutions comes from the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2006. As its name says, it is about admission. Every degree rule The Dalit Project read applies one standard to all: the same grade point average to graduate from IIT Delhi, the same pass marks for the MBBS medical degree, the same coursework mark for a PhD.
There are exceptions after admission, and the Data desk’s Admitted, then the same exams piece shows them. IIT Delhi sets a lower credit threshold for SC and ST students to continue after the first year, and a lower grade point average to change branch. The Bar Council of India’s qualifying mark for its bar exam is 40% for SC, ST and disabled candidates against 45% for others. None changes what the degree itself requires.
The seats are not overflowing with SCs either. They were 13.2% of students in central universities’ teaching departments and 13.4% in Institutes of National Importance in 2023-24, below the 15% reserved, by the government’s All India Survey on Higher Education. Their share falls at each step up, to 10.0% of PhD students and 8.9% of those who completed a PhD, as the Data desk’s School to PhD piece shows.
SC candidates also win unreserved places. In the Civil Services Examinations of 2006 to 2009, 63 SC candidates were selected on the list the government calls “general merit”, by a Lok Sabha answer of March 2011. The allocation rules then let the government place such a candidate in a reserved vacancy only “if by this process they get a service of higher choice in the order of their preference”.
Seats left empty
If reservation were crowding others out, reserved posts would fill first. In central universities in December 2022, 75.2% of the Professor posts reserved for SCs were vacant, against 45.1% of General posts; at Associate Professor level, 64.7% against 25.1%, by a Lok Sabha answer of 12 December 2022. Reserved posts are emptier at every level. When members asked for vacancies by category in March and August 2026, the education ministry answered with the number of posts filled in its recruitment drive instead. The Data desk’s Empty chairs tracks what it has disclosed.
Many of those posts stay empty because selection panels declare candidates “not found suitable”, as The chair that stays empty set out. Dalit organisations say the interview there is not neutral.
“Politics is at its peak in the bureaucracy and in academia. Interview boards are mostly made up of people from the forward castes, who are prejudiced against non-savarna [not from the dominant castes] candidates. Video recording of interviews should be mandatory.”
— Ashok Bharti, chair, National Confederation of Dalit Organisations (NACDOR), to The Quint Hindi, 4 July 2025, our translation
The quota no one objects to
In 2019 Parliament created a 10% reservation for “economically weaker sections” (EWS) among groups outside the SC, ST and OBC lists, for families with incomes under ₹8 lakh a year (about US$9,700). To keep the existing quotas whole, the government added 214,766 seats in central institutions.
By The Dalit Project’s estimate from two government surveys, about 93 of every 100 households outside the SC, ST and OBC groups fell under that line in 2023-24, on the surveys’ measures. Measured by earnings from work in PLFS, the share was 92.84%; measured by spending in the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey, 98.32%, or 92.89% after also leaving out households owning five acres or more. Neither survey measures income as the EWS test does, and both overstate the share. Even so, a quota whose income line takes in about 93 of every 100 households it is open to is wide by any measure. If quotas as such were the threat that critics describe, this one would be among the widest.
The Constitution sets no time limit on reservation in jobs or education. Its one time limit, in Article 334, applies to reserved seats in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies, and through them to panchayats and municipalities: “eighty years” from the commencement of the Constitution.
The strongest case for the complaint
The complaint has a real basis at the gate. To enter the rank list for IIT admission in 2026, an SC candidate needed 5% in each subject and 17.5% in aggregate in JEE (Advanced), against 10% and 35% on the common rank list. The UGC’s PhD rules allow SC candidates 5 points less in their master’s marks. On those measures, some SC students are admitted with lower entrance scores than others, and that is what reservation at admission is designed to do.
It falls short as an account of what critics call merit. The lower bar is at entry, not at exit: the same students then face the same degree rules. Even with it, SCs are fewer than 15% of students in central universities. And the reserved faculty posts, where candidates are judged long after their own degrees, are left empty most often.
What to watch
- Census 2027. Most of India is counted in February 2027, to a reference date of 1 March 2027, and asks every household its caste. It will replace the 2011 population share the figures above are measured against.
- Senior posts. Whether the personnel ministry starts to keep a caste count of officers at Joint Secretary level and above.
- Faculty vacancies. Whether the education ministry again gives vacant posts by category, as it did in 2022.
Where the quota stops
The record shows reservation reaching a small and shrinking share of jobs, filling posts roughly in proportion to the population, leaving SCs most visible in sanitation work, and stopping at the door of the private sector and the senior civil service, where the government does not count, or has stopped counting. What critics call merit has plenty of room in India. What the record does not show is a Dalit taking it away.
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