‘Reservation Hatao Andolan’ gets caste and merit wrong | LME 153 | Pooja Prasanna
On July 22, as the protests against Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan gathered momentum, something unusual began happening online.
A new movement suddenly appeared.
Reservation Hatao Andolan.
At first, it barely had any followers. But on the very day Pradhan resigned, its reach exploded.
It now has millions of followers.
The people behind Reservation Hatao Andolan position themselves as the ideological opposite of those who had forced Pradhan's resignation. At the same time, they insisted they were not aligned to any political party.
Was it simply a coincidence that an anti-reservation campaign surged just as the Modi government was facing one of its biggest political setbacks? We may never know.
What we can expose is the fake narratives and flawed logic behind this mysterious new campaign.
Its central argument is simple: reservations should be based on economic status, not caste.
That argument falls apart once you understand why reservations exist in the first place.
Reservation is not a poverty alleviation program. It is designed to address social exclusion. It is meant for those castes whose economic status has no impact on their social standing.
It is for those individuals who could become rich entrepreneurs or powerful bureaucrats and still be denied entry into a temple or public space. Economic success does not erase caste.
SImply put: Reservation is a way to include those groups in the mainstream that are identified as Shudhra, Chandala, Mleccha or Avarna in the Hindu scriptures.
Of course, this argument is unlikely to persuade those who deny that caste discrimination is rooted in Hindu society, or who believe caste was merely a creation of the Mughals or the British.
But that isn't the argument I want to spend time on today.
Instead, I want to examine a different claim. One that is repeated endlessly by the anti-reservation movement.
That reservations have stolen educational opportunities and government jobs from forward-caste communities.
The evidence tells a very different story.
Let Me Explain
Before I move on, here’s one request.
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Now, as I said, I am NOT going to get into the question of why reservations are necessary.
That debate has resurfaced repeatedly, from the Mandal protests in 1990 to the anti-OBC reservation protests in 2006.
Instead, let’s ask this:
Are reservations really taking away the jobs and educational opportunities of the savarna communities?
Or are reservations not even being implemented the way the Constitution intended?
Once you look at the numbers, the answer becomes much harder to ignore.
The state is supposed to ensure 16 per cent reservation for Scheduled Castes, 8 per cent for Scheduled Tribes and 27 per cent for the Other Backward Classes.
Of course, there are also far more SC, ST and OBC students in higher education, government jobs and the judiciary today compared to the time when there were no reservations.
But far from meeting the required quota, there are institutions across India that deliberately violate these guidelines.
Let's start with an institution where reservations don't exist at all: India's higher judiciary.
If you want to know what happens when affirmative action is absent, the courts offer a revealing answer.
According to data tabled in Parliament earlier this year, nearly 80% of High Court judges appointed between 2021 and January 2026 belonged to upper-caste or so-called general category communities. These communities make up only about 12% of India's population.
Scheduled Castes, who are nearly one-fifth of the population, accounted for just 4% of appointments. Scheduled Tribes, who make up close to 10% of the population, were only 2.3%. OBCs, who make up more than half the country's population, accounted for just 13.5%.
Supporters of the status quo often argue that reservations compromise merit. But the higher judiciary, where there are no reservations, raises a different question: if appointments are based purely on merit, why do they remain so overwhelmingly dominated by a small social group?
Many scholars argue that the answer lies in the way the legal profession is structured. Entry into the higher judiciary is often shaped by family networks, senior lawyers and informal patronage. The few that make it past this gatekeeping are rarely in a position to challenge the caste cartels that dominate the topmost courts.
Professor Mohan Gopal, former Vice Chancellor of the National Law School in Bengaluru, has described this as a "caste oligarchy", where a handful of families continue to dominate the institution.
Higher education presents another glaring example of impunity.
Reservations in student admissions are largely implemented across central universities, IITs and IIMs. But when it comes to faculty recruitment, implementation has been far weaker.
Although reservations are mandatory in teaching posts, more than 80% of faculty members in many premier institutions continue to belong to the general category, while large numbers of reserved posts remain vacant.
So to sum it up, reservations have improved access to higher education and public employment over the decades. But that doesn’t mean these students no longer face ostracisation. Every day we hear of instances of casteism in institutions.
And in many of India's most influential institutions, representation still falls far short of what the Constitution envisaged.
And that's where another important question comes in.
Even if representation has improved in the public sector, what about the private sector?
Unlike government jobs and public educational institutions, there is no reservation in private-sector employment. And that's where most new jobs in India are being created.
The problem is that we know surprisingly little about who gets those jobs. Private companies are not required to publish the caste composition of their workforce.
But the evidence we do have points in the same direction.
Studies show that SC and ST communities are significantly less represented in the private sector than in government employment.
In state private universities, Scheduled Castes make up just 2.99% of faculty and Scheduled Tribes 1.77%. In private deemed universities, ST representation falls to just 0.45%.
A Parliamentary Standing Committee also found that SC and ST admissions in elite private institutions remain below 1% each.
Employment data tells a similar story. Upper-caste groups hold a disproportionately large share of organised private-sector jobs, while SC and ST communities remain underrepresented. Research also shows that the larger the company, the lower the representation of SC and ST employees.
The Bihar Caste Survey offers one of the clearest illustrations. Although Scheduled Castes make up nearly one-fifth of the state's population, they account for just 0.51% of organised private-sector jobs. Scheduled Tribes account for only 0.68%.
The disparities don't end with hiring. SC workers in the organised private sector earn, on average, about 32% less than forward-caste workers. Researchers estimate that hiring discrimination accounts for nearly 60% of the gap in access to private-sector jobs.
But discrimination isn't confined to the private sector.
Even where reservations are mandatory, another practice has come under scrutiny: Not Found Suitable, or NFS.
NFS allows a selection committee to leave a reserved post vacant if it concludes that no candidate meets the required standard. The principle itself isn't controversial. Reservation doesn't exempt candidates from meeting eligibility criteria.
The controversy lies in how the rule is applied.
Anti-caste groups have long argued that NFS is used to keep reserved posts vacant, particularly in universities. Government data certainly shows that thousands of reserved faculty positions remain unfilled despite repeated recruitment drives.
That raises an obvious question. Who decides what "suitable" means? And how transparent is that decision?
One of the most influential studies on discrimination in hiring was conducted by economist Sukhadeo Thorat and sociologist Paul Attewell in 2007.
The researchers sent hundreds of identical job applications to employers. Every application listed the same qualifications and experience. The only difference was the applicant's name. Some names signalled a Dalit identity, others an upper-caste Hindu identity, and others a Muslim identity.
The results were striking.
Applicants with upper-caste Hindu names were significantly more likely to receive interview calls than equally qualified applicants with Dalit or Muslim names.
The study doesn't suggest that every employer discriminates. But it does show that caste can influence hiring decisions even when qualifications are identical.
For scholars like Thorat, that’s precisely why the debate over reservations cannot be limited to government jobs alone.
This also exposes one of the biggest flaws in the argument against reservations.
Critics often say reservations should be based only on economic status.
But poverty and caste are not the same thing.
A poor upper-caste student and a poor Dalit student may both struggle financially. But only one belongs to a community that has faced generations of exclusion from education, public institutions and positions of power.
That's why the Constitution treats economic disadvantage and caste discrimination as separate issues.
But there's another question that almost nobody asks.
When people claim reservations have either succeeded or failed, what evidence are they relying on?
India has not conducted a nationwide caste census covering all communities since Independence. We simply don't have current data to answer some of the most basic questions.
Without reliable data, these questions are answered not with evidence, but with ideology.
And that's the irony.
Till there is data, we'll continue arguing over assumptions instead of facts.
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