In 1980, the Mandal Commission submitted its report—it applied eleven relative indicators, grouped into three broad heads (social,23 educational24 and economic25) to ascertain which classes could be treated as socially and economically backward. The commission found 3743 socially and economically backward castes via these parameters—a figure 50 per cent higher than that arrived at by the Kalelkar Commission. From the caste figures based on the census of 1931—the last time a caste census had been conducted in India—as well as the population census of 1971, the Mandal Commission inferred that
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