Affirmative action for persons, not groups

Last week, the Supreme Court reserved judgment on whether a state government is empowered to make sub-classification in SC/ST quotas for deprived and weaker castes in these groups in admissions and public jobs. The issue before the top court was whether the Punjab Scheduled Castes and Backward Classes (Reservation in Services) Act 2006 – which provided Balmikis and Mazhabi Sikhs with ‘first preference’ reservation over 50% of the total seats reserved for SCs – is valid. The chief justice constituted a seven-judge bench after a five-judge bench in 2020 doubted the correctness of the decision in the 2004 ‘EV Chinnaiah v State of Andhra Pradesh’ case. In this case, a five-judge bench had set aside a similar law in Andhra Pradesh that created sub-classifications within the SC category. The Punjab government argued before the apex court that Chinnaiah had wrongly interpreted SCs as one homogenous class.

While the purpose of reservations is to help communities overcome generational and systemic hurdles, the bench correctly has said that any sub-classification will require a set of criteria. You can’t just dole out quotas ‘theoretically’. An efficient selection system is critical to ensuring that quotas benefit the last person, not just communities. It must consider parameters beyond SC/ST subgroup identities – such as family and individual wealth, income, education, rural or urban, and gender – to create a multidimensional index that objectively assesses comparative disadvantage within the SC/ST category.

Transparency is key to the quota process being effective for the purpose it was created. No point providing such affirmative action to, say, a wealthy dalit or denying it to a badly-off brahmin. In other words, individuals over groups.