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New Reservation Policy
Is the reservation policy earmarking a 10% quota for the economically weaker sections of the “general category” empirically founded and justifiable? An analysis of 445 premier higher education institutions finds that this section of students already had about 28% of representation—that is, close to three times the proposed 10% quota—in these institutions in 2016–17. This finding raises questions as to the relevance and possible impact of the proposed policy.
The authors would like to thank Mayank Agrawal and Vamsi Krishna for their comments.
Is the Constitution (124th Amendment) Bill 2019, or the reservation policy earmarking 10% quota for the economically weaker sections (EWS) of the “general category,” based on credible evidence? Specifically, does the available evidence suggest this section is under-represented in public and private education institutions in India? This question forms the basis of the analysis of this article, which is confined to the education sector only. To do so, a novel data set has been analysed, that is, educational institutions ranked as per National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD). The analysis done by the authors suggests that the EWS from the “general category” already had secured a share three times greater than the proposed quota in these premier institutions in 2016–17, despite the absence of reservation and the presence of more restrictive eligibility criteria.
Questioning the Intent
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