“If both parents are IAS officers, why should they have reservations? With education and economic empowerment, there is social mobility. So then again to seek reservation for the children, we will never get out of it.”
The observation made by the Supreme Court judge Justice BV Nagarathna during the hearing of Raghavendra Fakeerappa Chandranavar vs Department of Backward Classes Welfare was not merely rhetorical. It struck at the centre of one of India’s most unresolved constitutional debates.
The two-judge bench, headed by Justice BV Nagarathna and also consisting of Justice Ujjal Bhuyan, while examining a challenge linked to the exclusion of a candidate under the creamy layer principle, was not questioning the legitimacy of reservation itself. Rather, it was interrogating its present architecture. Beneath the remark lay a deeper constitutional concern: are the benefits of affirmative action reaching those still trapped in structural deprivation, or are they being repeatedly accessed by those who have already achieved social and economic mobility?
The discomfort within the judiciary is no longer subtle.
In 2024, a Constitution bench led by former Chief Justice DY Chandrachud revisited the contours of reservation jurisprudence. During the proceedings, Justice BR Gavai made a remark that has since shaped public discourse: the “creamy layer” principle, presently applicable to Other Backward Classes (OBCs), may also deserve consideration within Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
The reasoning was rooted not in theory, but in social reality. Those who have already benefited from reservation and attained upward mobility, Justice Gavai suggested, may no longer represent the most deprived sections within their communities.
This was not an argument against reservation. It was an argument for refining it.
Yet, the debate cannot be understood through courtrooms alone. It must also be understood through lived experience.
WHERE CASTE BEGINS
As someone belonging to an OBC community, reservation has never been an abstract policy debate for me. It has shaped opportunity, identity, and, at times, the silent burden of social prejudice.
My earliest understanding of caste did not come from textbooks. It came from the geography of my village.
The Scheduled Caste community lived in a separate colony at the edge of the village, physically distant and socially marked. No one explicitly called it discrimination; it was presented as the natural order of things. But even as a child, the symbolism was unmistakable. Margins were not accidental. They were designed.
I grew up witnessing Dalit families step aside when the patriarchs of dominant-caste households crossed their path. Stories narrated within the family reinforced the same hierarchy. One account about my great-grandfather remains etched in memory—not merely for its emotional weight, but for what it revealed about the everyday violence of exclusion. Dalit men, it was said, would turn their backs to avoid making eye contact with him, a large landlord in the village.
Caste was never just an identity. It was a system that governed dignity, access, and survival. That was the starting point.
WHEN OPPORTUNITY ARRIVES, BUT EQUALITY DOES NOT
Years later, during a summer visit to the village, I witnessed another revealing moment.
The son of a family helper, belonging to the same marginalised community living at the village edge, had returned home after joining the police force as an officer.
My uncle, himself a retired army officer, invited the young recruit home as a gesture of respect. Yet, discomfort filled the room the moment he was offered a chair and served tea.
The scene revealed a truth India still struggles with: mobility may alter status, but it does not automatically erase caste memory.
Education opened doors for my generation. Reservation made possible journeys that would otherwise have remained inaccessible. It corrected, at least partially, a system that had never begun on equal terms.
But progress did not dissolve prejudice.
In universities and professional spaces, caste discrimination rarely appeared in overt form. It had evolved into coded silences, surname-based assumptions, and invisible social networks. There were moments when access had been granted, but acceptance still felt conditional.
Reservation ensured entry. It did not fully eliminate social distance.
And yet, denying its transformative power would be dishonest. Entire generations—including mine—moved forward because of it. The country changed. Opportunities expanded.
That is precisely why today’s debate is so complex.
THE UNEASY QUESTION WITHIN
The most difficult questions often emerge not from exclusion outside communities, but from inequality within them.
When the Mandal Commission recommendations extending 27 percent reservation to OBCs were implemented, my school teacher once asked me to get an OBC certificate form signed by my father. He refused.
My father, a government officer, insisted that we belonged to the “creamy layer” and, therefore, should not avail reservation benefits. His reasoning extended beyond income. As members of an educationally and socially advanced agrarian community, he believed we had already crossed the barriers the policy was meant to address.
Over time, one reality becomes impossible to ignore: within historically disadvantaged communities, new internal hierarchies are emerging.
Some families have leveraged education, State support, and opportunity to achieve stability—even privilege. Others remain exactly where they were decades ago.
This is where Justice Gavai’s observation acquires urgency.
The question is no longer whether reservation is justified—it unquestionably is.
The real question is whether its benefits are being equitably distributed within the communities it seeks to uplift. If certain groups have already crossed structural barriers, should policy not evolve to prioritise those still trapped beneath them?
It is an uncomfortable conversation because it forces us to acknowledge that even just policies, if left unexamined, can produce unequal outcomes over time.
WHY RESERVATION EXISTS
Any serious discussion on reservation must return to first principles.
Reservation in India is not a poverty alleviation scheme. It is a constitutional response to centuries of entrenched social exclusion. Rooted in Articles 15(4), 16(4), and 46 of the Constitution, it was envisioned as a mechanism to ensure representation and correct historical injustice.
The implementation of the Mandal Commission recommendations in the 1990s expanded this framework to include OBCs, fundamentally reshaping India’s social and political landscape.
But even as India urbanised and modernised, caste did not disappear. It adapted.
THE PERSISTENCE OF CASTE
Contemporary India continues to reveal how deeply caste remains embedded in everyday life.
Crimes against Scheduled Castes continue to be reported in significant numbers each year. Educational institutions, often imagined as neutral spaces, still witness forms of exclusion, ranging from social segregation to subtle discrimination.
Recent incidents have exposed the persistence of caste prejudice in disturbing ways: children refusing mid-day meals cooked by Dalit women, or the widely reported case of a man urinating on a Dalit youth in an act of humiliating dominance.
These are not isolated aberrations. They are reminders that economic mobility does not automatically translate into social equality.
The grammar of caste survives—sometimes invisibly, sometimes violently.
And that is precisely why reservation remains indispensable.
REIMAGINING AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
The challenge before India is not whether reservation should continue. It must. The challenge is how it should evolve.
The Constitution never envisioned reservation as a static instrument. It was designed as a dynamic tool of social justice, capable of responding to changing realities. The debate around sub-classification and the possible extension of the creamy layer principle to SC/ST categories must, therefore, be approached with caution—not as a rollback of rights, but as a refinement aimed at deeper equity.
The objective is not exclusion. It is better inclusion.
That requires a more nuanced understanding of disadvantage—one that recognises both historical oppression and contemporary disparities within communities themselves.
EDUCATION: THE REAL EQUALISER
If reservation is the bridge, education is the foundation beneath it.
Affirmative action cannot achieve its full promise unless access to quality schooling becomes genuinely universal. Without strengthening primary and secondary education, reservation in higher institutions risks disproportionately benefiting those who have already managed to navigate an unequal system.
The true measure of progress will not merely be how many students enter elite institutions through reservation, but how many are prepared, empowered, and able to thrive within them.
Policy must, therefore, shift from enabling entry alone to ensuring capability.
India today stands at a critical juncture in its reservation discourse.
Both the legislature and the judiciary now carry a dual responsibility: to address internal inequities within reserved categories while simultaneously expanding educational opportunity for those still excluded from meaningful mobility.
The aim cannot be perpetual dependence on reservation. Nor can it be the premature withdrawal of support in the name of progress.
The objective must remain advancement—social, educational, and economic—until birth no longer determines destiny.
Reservation was never meant to be an end in itself. It was always a means: towards dignity, equality, and justice.
Until that promise is fulfilled, the argument for reservation does not weaken.
It grows stronger.
—The writer is a New Delhi-based journalist, lawyer and trained mediator
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