In terms of affluence, Muslims were found to be on par with OBCs but in terms of higher educational attainments, Muslims lagged behind OBCs.
Moreover, things are getting worse for Muslims, likely as a result of a lack of quotas. Since the mid-1950s, intergenerational mobility—the opportunity for a boy to do better in life than his father—has improved for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, but fallen for Muslims.
The economists Sam Asher, Paul Novosad, and Charlie Rafkin of the World Bank, Dartmouth and MIT respectively used educational outcomes as a proxy for overall mobility and found that the expected educational rank of a Muslim child has fallen substantially over the last 20 years and intergenerational mobility is now considerably worse among Muslims than among
SCs and STs.
“Higher caste groups have experienced constant and high upward mobility over time, a result that contradicts a popular notion that it is increasingly difficult for higher caste Hindus to get ahead,” the authors wrote.
There is evidence to suggest that quotas can improve educational outcomes. Guilhem Cassan, an economist at the University of Namur in Belgium, took advantage of a natural experiment which occurred in 1976, when the lists of SCs were harmonized across states for the first time since Independence, giving fresh SC status to 250,000 people.
Cassan compared the educational levels of those people who had SC status since Independence, and those who were of school-going age when they got SC status in 1976, and found that access to the SC status led to an improvement in years of schooling, literacy and numeracy levels.
Their backwardness should ensure that Muslims have first claim to any new affirmative action.
But if they have to compete with forward caste Hindus for a small share of reserved college spots and jobs, Muslims might find themselves the last to be picked.
In terms of affluence, Muslims were found to be on par with OBCs but in terms of higher educational attainments, Muslims lagged behind OBCs.