Dr Varinder Sharma
drvarindersharmabjp@gmail.com
India stands at a defining crossroads. As the world’s fifth-largest economy, with aspirations to become a developed nation -Viksit Bharat – by 2047, the country carries an enormous ambition. Yet running beneath the surface of this grand vision is a deep structural fault line: a caste based reservation system that, in its current form, has progressively drifted from its founding purpose and now risks becoming a serious drag on the nation’s march toward modernity, meritocracy, and inclusive prosperity. This is not an argument against social justice. It is an argument for honest reckoning.
India’s reservation policy was born out of moral necessity. Dr B.R. Ambedkar designed it as a temporary corrective – a constitutional bridge to carry historically oppressed communities across centuries of institutionalised exclusion into the mainstream of national life. Originally intended for ten years, it has persisted for over seven decades and expanded far beyond its original scope. Following the Mandal Commission’s recommendations, OBCs were brought under the reservation system, receiving 27% of reserved seats, while SCs were allocated 15% and STs 7.5%. Then, in 2019, came the 103rd Constitutional Amendment, adding a 10% quota for Economically Weaker Sections among the general category. As a result, about 60% of seats are now reserved in India for various sections – SC, ST, OBC, and EWS – with respect to government jobs and higher educational institutions. The numbers are staggering. In some states, quotas have climbed even higher. In Tamil Nadu, caste-based reservation stands at 69 per cent and applies to about 89 per cent of the population. What began as a targeted remedy has become a sprawling entitlement architecture, increasingly detached from its original moral logic.
India’s greatest competitive advantage in the 21st century is its demographic dividend – over 900 million people of working age. But that advantage only compounds if the best minds rise to the top, irrespective of birth. When more than half of all government positions and premier educational seats are allocated on the basis of caste identity rather than demonstrated ability, the country pays a hidden price in institutional quality. Perhaps the most damning indictment of the current system is not that it benefits the wrong people in principle, but that it does so in practice. The dominant and elite class within the backward castes has appropriated the benefits of reservation, and the most marginalised within the backward castes have remained marginalised. A second-generation officer’s child from an OBC family competes on the same reserved terms as a first-generation learner from a remote tribal hamlet. The result is a system that perpetuates privilege within communities it was meant to uplift.
With the growing politicisation of the Most Backward Castes within the OBCs, there has been growing concern that a few affluent sections of have been able to take advantage of the reservation system, while smaller and more marginalised groups remain underrepresented. If the government cannot ensure that LAC or RBA employees serve in their designated areas to uplift their communities, the rationale for granting them reservation benefits becomes questionable. Perhaps most damaging of all is what reservation has become politically. In many states, citizens face acute agrarian distress, stagnating employment growth, and developmental distortions, prompting governments to discuss reservations instead of making necessary changes. Reservation has become a political escape hatch – a tool to deflect attention from policy failures in job creation, education reform, and rural development. For governments, it is easier to talk of reservations than to make a course correction. Every time a dominant caste group agitates for inclusion, the political class responds not with structural economic reform but with the promise of more quotas, deepening the cycle.
Here is the fundamental economic absurdity: a million candidates compete for just a few government posts. Reservations distribute a shrinking slice of the formal employment pie more equitably. As the private sector absorbs more than 90% of employment and the public sector shrinks as a proportion of the economy, the reservation system’s relevance to actual economic uplift diminishes with every passing year. India’s rigid quota system has quietly fuelled a significant brain drain. Talented general-category students, denied seats in premier institutions despite high merit, increasingly migrate to the US, UK, Canada and Gulf countries for opportunities. This exodus of intellectual capital weakens India’s innovation ecosystem, depriving the nation of the very minds needed to power its development ambitions. Practically, CEO of every tech giant is an Indian. Reservation in state services has created divisions among government employees. Beyond workplaces, the system perpetuates and institutionalises caste identity at precisely the moment India needs to transcend it. Sociological studies suggest that institutionalising caste-based quotas reinforces caste identities, making the vision of a post-caste India ever more distant.
The answer to a broken system is not demolition but redesign. No serious reformer can advocate the overnight abolition of reservations without reckoning with the stark social realities that still exist. Caste discrimination remains a living reality in India. What is needed is a credible, phased evolution of the system – one that preserves its social justice mandate while restoring meritocracy and development efficiency. The creamy layer concept – excluding the wealthiest within reserved categories – must be genuinely enforced across all groups, including SCs and STs. The reservation benefits should flow to the vast majority of underprivileged children from deprived castes, not to a few privileged children with a caste tag. High-ranking officials’ families, high-income professionals, and others above a certain income should not receive reservation benefits. This single reform, if implemented seriously, would redirect the benefits of the system to those who actually need it.
The Supreme Court’s 2024 judgment permitted states to make sub-classifications, holding that states are constitutionally empowered to target affirmative action toward castes that are socially and educationally more backward and inadequately represented. This is a landmark opportunity. Sub-classification within the OBC and SC/ST categories can ensure that the most marginalised communities – not the politically dominant ones – actually receive the benefits. The upcoming caste census data must be the basis for this recalibration.
The purpose of the reservation was never merely to redistribute poverty – it was to correct structural exclusion. A reformed system should move toward a composite index that weighs both caste-based social discrimination and economic deprivation, targeting those who suffer the intersection of both disadvantages. This would make the system more precise and defensible. The most durable solution is to reduce the demand for reservations by expanding the supply of opportunities. Radical investment in the quality of primary and secondary education in Dalit, tribal, and OBC communities – better schools, trained teachers, digital access – would produce a generation of students who can compete on open merit. Revolutionary changes in the education system at the grassroots level are the need of the hour.
With the shrinking of public sector employment, caste census data might reveal the dominance of upper castes in the private sector, giving momentum to demands for reservations in private universities and private sector jobs, which occupy more than 90% of the job sector. But this will be suicidal for Viksit Bharat’s dream. Dr Ambedkar’s original vision included a time limit. A reformed system should bind Parliament to periodic, data-driven reviews – every five years – assessing whether each community has achieved adequate representation and whether continued reservation remains justified. This would replace the current political logic, where no party dares reduce any quota, with an institutional logic rooted in evidence. India cannot afford to treat this debate as taboo. The country’s development ambitions – manufacturing competitiveness, world-class institutions, a knowledge economy, global soft power – all require that the best people rise to the best positions. That imperative does not conflict with social justice; it demands that social justice be delivered better, not merely preserved in its most politically convenient form. The current reservation architecture, frozen in amber from an earlier era, no longer serves either the poor among backward communities or the aspiring India of the 21st century. Reforming it is not an act of privilege – it is an act of courage, and perhaps the most important unfinished task of the Republic.
(The writer is Co-convenor, Health Cell, J&K BJP)
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