creamy layer
n.— «Though the benefits have never been so freely accessible to all “SCs” as some in India often imagine, neither are they so confined to “a creamy layer” already risen to the top from amongst the Scheduled Caste mass, as radical critics of the system content.» —“‘Untouchable’: What is in a Name?” by Simon Charsley Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute Mar., 1996. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)