Following the news of Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation and celebrations among protesters, a new demand emerged among a section of the youth: to end reservation in India.
Reservation is a system of affirmative action in India established during the British Raj. Based on provisions in the Indian Constitution, it allows the Union government and the states and Union Territories of India to allocate a specific percentage of reserved quotas or seats in higher education admissions, employment, political bodies and more for “socially and economically backward citizens.”
The core groups covered by central quotas include Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), Other Backwards Classes (OBC), and Economically Weaker Sections (EWS).
The movement has gathered momentum online, anchored by an Instagram page called ‘Reservation Hatao Movement’, which had crossed 5.8 million followers at the time of writing. Influencers have taken to the page to share their views under slogans such as “Save country from paralysed education system.”
EastMojo reached out to academicians across the country who have worked closely with students from various backgrounds to understand how they view the movement.
A Constitutional Mandate for Equity
Joseph Riamei, Assistant Professor at the School of Social Work at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, argued that reservation remains essential to dismantling deeply entrenched social hierarchies.
“In India, caste and tribe-based reservation is a constitutional mandate vital for achieving social equity and justice. More than a welfare scheme, it actively dismantles deeply entrenched social hierarchies and ensures institutional representation for historically marginalised groups. Reservation anchors the nation’s democratic survival, bridging multi-generational gaps by providing marginalised communities with access to spaces that have historically been denied to them,” he said.
For India’s Indigenous tribes, Riamei added, reservation serves as the ultimate defence against structural erasure, a way of honouring constitutional promises of equity and social justice, and of ensuring that the country’s economic and developmental growth does not come at the expense of its first peoples.
The Case for Review
Not all voices in the debate call for reservation’s continuation without question. Many supporters of the “Reservation Hatao” movement point out that the policy was originally conceived as a temporary constitutional measure to address historical discrimination. Rather than continuing indefinitely, they argue, it should be periodically reassessed through a national review commission to determine whether it is still meeting its intended goals.
Too Much Reservation? No, Too Little Implementation
A professor at IIT, speaking on condition of anonymity, offered a sharply different diagnosis. He described the current backlash as part of a longstanding prejudice, noting that it is mostly SC and ST communities who find themselves under attack in these debates.
“There is little discussion about its fair implementation, and report after government report indicates that many of the seats remain vacant to this day. This is more so in the higher posts: the higher the position, the poorer the representation. I must add that for a long time, the top positions across occupations have been controlled by, and remain over-represented by, a tiny section of society, be it the judiciary, teaching, the media or the medical profession. It is unfortunate that we are having a conversation on whether reservation is still needed when we have fared poorly in terms of its implementation even after 70 years of India’s independence. I cannot imagine a situation in which we do not have affirmative action policies, because it would result in the almost total exclusion of SCs/STs from many professions,” he said.
He called for comprehensive, sector-wide data spanning teaching, the media, the judiciary and beyond to establish clearly which groups hold which positions, who controls resources, and how many communities within the SC/ST fold have actually benefited from the policy.
What the Numbers Show
A 2024 report by the Times of India pointed to what it called a complex paradox: even as the “creamy layer” debate centres on the equitable distribution of quotas within reserved categories, government records show thousands of reserved SC/ST positions going unfilled every year as a result of structural gaps, unaddressed backlog vacancies and rigid eligibility requirements.
That tension—between how quotas are distributed within communities and how many institutional posts sit vacant altogether—points to several overlapping issues.
A separate strand of research and commentary complicates the picture of reservation’s costs and benefits.
A JETIR comparative study of state-wise reservation systems argues that the policy can lead to a less optimal match between candidates’ skills and the roles they fill, with knock-on effects for institutional performance and productivity.
Both that study and a separate literature review published in the International Journal of Social Science Research and Review also note that reservations’ benefits are not evenly distributed even among intended beneficiaries.
A relatively small, better-off segment within reserved categories—the “creamy layer”—is widely seen as capturing a disproportionate share of quota seats and jobs, leaving the most disadvantaged within those same communities still underserved.
“Let’s Stop Reservation When…”
Set against these more technical critiques is a more uncompromising argument by a professor from Tamil Nadu, who also spoke to EastMojo on condition of anonymity.
The professor argued that reservation’s efficiency or design flaws are beside the point until the underlying inequality itself is eliminated. He then laid down a set of conditions for when the policy should end, saying:
“Let’s stop reservation when an upper-caste person does manual scavenging. Let’s stop reservation when the collegium of Supreme Court judges is full of Dalit Bahujans. Let’s stop reservation when Dalit Bahujans are more than half of the vice-chancellors of state and central universities. Let’s stop reservation when Dalit Bahujans can perform puja in all Hindu temples. Let’s stop reservation when no one is killed for marrying a person of another caste. Let’s stop reservation when Dalit Bahujan students feel included and are treated with dignity in higher education institutions. Let’s stop reservation when prisons are free of Dalit Bahujan inmates. Let’s stop reservation when no one carries caste titles in their names. Let’s stop reservation when Dalit Bahujans own more than half of the land. Let’s stop reservation when no one is killed because of caste. Let’s stop reservation when everyone is treated equally and respectfully.”
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