Is Reservation Still Serving Its Original Purpose?
Reservation in India was created to address historical social and educational disadvantage. As India has changed, should every reservation programme continue in its current form? An analysis of reservation, equality of opportunity, policy design and human behavior.
8/31/20263 min read
Reservation in India was created to address a real problem: a society marked by deep social exclusion, unequal access to education and inadequate representation of historically disadvantaged communities. The Constitution therefore permitted affirmative measures for socially and educationally backward classes and for communities that were inadequately represented in public services. Economic disadvantage, as a separate basis for reservation, was incorporated much later through the 103rd Constitutional Amendment.
More than seven decades after Independence, however, India is a very different country. That does not mean inequality has disappeared, nor does it mean reservation has suddenly become unnecessary everywhere. It does mean that we should be willing to ask a difficult question: Does every reservation programme still serve the purpose for which it was created?
I believe the answer should not automatically be yes.
A policy designed to correct unequal starting conditions should itself be evaluated against the conditions that exist today. Some programmes may still require reservation because the disadvantage they address remains significant. Others may need to be redesigned, reduced or eventually reconsidered. The mistake is to treat reservation as one uniform policy that must remain equally applicable to every programme indefinitely.
Consider competitive examinations such as the UPSC Civil Services Examination. The system provides different eligibility concessions for different categories. UPSC's current rules provide different numbers of attempts for General/EWS, OBC and SC/ST candidates, while reservation policy also operates alongside other forms of affirmative accommodation.
There is a legitimate policy question here.
If affirmative action is intended to compensate for unequal opportunity, how much additional opportunity is appropriate, and at what point should that additional accommodation be reconsidered?
Imagine a candidate who has already received many more opportunities to compete for an extremely selective examination than another candidate. Their repeated failure does not prove that caste or economic disadvantage played no role in their circumstances. But it does raise a question about whether every additional opportunity remains proportionate to the disadvantage the policy is intended to address.
This distinction matters because public policy does not operate only through outcomes. It also shapes people's perceptions of fairness.
When individuals believe that the rules of a competition give substantially different opportunities to different groups, they may begin to perceive the process itself as unfair. That can produce relative deprivation: the feeling that someone else has received an advantage at one's own expense. In highly competitive environments, such perceptions can easily become group-based rather than individual.
This is where the reservation debate becomes more than a constitutional or economic question. It becomes a question of human behaviour.
People respond to incentives. Once a policy creates a valuable benefit, beneficiaries have a natural incentive to retain access to that benefit. At the same time, people outside the beneficiary group may increasingly question whether the benefit remains proportionate to the disadvantage it was intended to address.
The policy itself already recognizes that the relationship between group membership and individual disadvantage can be complicated. The "creamy layer" principle has been used to exclude relatively advanced sections from OBC reservation, reflecting the idea that membership in a broad category does not necessarily mean identical levels of disadvantage for every individual. The Supreme Court's jurisprudence has treated the question differently for SCs and STs, making the broader issue even more complex.
The answer, therefore, should not be a blanket abolition of reservation. Nor should it be an assumption that every existing reservation programme must continue indefinitely.
The relevant question should increasingly be: What disadvantage is this particular programme trying to correct, does that disadvantage remain significant in this context, and is reservation still the most appropriate instrument for addressing it?
Some programmes may continue to need reservation. Some may need reform. Some may eventually not need it at all.
The objective should not be to preserve reservation or abolish it for its own sake.
The objective should be equality of opportunity.
And if India has changed, our policies should be capable of changing with it.
© 2026 Paras Panjwani. All rights reserved.
Paras Panjwani
Behavioral Scientist & Author
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