The assumption on seat matrix itself is wrong.
First of all, reservation only applies to sanctioned seats. NRI/FN/OCI quota is over and above and not a part of the sanctioned seats so they are not carved out of general seats.
Secondly, many law schools including NLUs applied the EWS quota not on sanctioned seats, but applied it as over and above after Bar Council approval. Plus if you are assuming 100 seats pre-EWS and including EWS in sanctioned seats, then the seat matrix automatically becomes 125 because it is standard practice to increase seats when applying reservation. So numerically, general seats are not going anywhere.

There is a lot more nuance to this than the way you put it. Your math is like that of the school kid who counts all holidays, weekends to show that there is a vacation 365 days so he cant go the school.
Also, middle-class Parsis do not exist, in 2014 a Parsi earning less than 90,000/- per month was considered poor.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/bombay-hc-agrees-a-poor-parsi-earns-up-to-rs-90k-a-month/articleshow/44911648.cms

Without a women's quota in education, it is impossible to have a sufficient pool of educated and skilled women to even fulfill the women's quota in employment. And most of all, the women's quota currently followed is horizontal so if 50% of women are even underrepresented to 30%, the quota simply does not trigger.

Caste Discrimination is a very real thing and vicious thing in India I have nowhere denied that nor do I believe reservations are only used by "rich people" and I understand reservations is meant to primarily address more than just economic disadvantage. Nor do I believe we should stop reservation for a couple of more decades in this country, but there must be some timeline or at least something against which you measure progress/effectiveness. There must be some practical restrictions being placed and the Government must ensure that the benefits are directly reaching people who can be the ones to break the cycles of poverty/ get better secured jobs/ culturally have a stronger foothold in society.

I believe reservations should be capped the same family cant be allowed to use its over three generations (or some cap like that) considerations of income should be a factor. There should be continuous public data about from which demographic(location/ people who are the second or third generation in their family to use reservation ) so that the Government can make the system efficient and the public is aware that the sacrifices that the general category make are being used for something. This data should be publicly available and the government must be forced to directly make changes in policy and ensure public systems are in place so that people in need of reservations can actually avail them. I would love to see the data from the beginning regarding how many people who avail reservations are the first in their family and compared to generational quota users. And how that ratios between these two categories has changed over the decades.

(Anecdote- I helped our colony's vegetable vendor's son to fill in a post office Clerk form, the education he received in Government schools in Delhi is atrocious he got unpractical vocational subjects, he is not the one getting into IIT based on reservations, he doesn't have the bare minimum qualifications to even apply to DU beyond vocational courses which again offer no job security. When the Government for the last couple of decades has let the Government Schools systems deteriorate for so long often the people who use reservations come from families where there Grandparents broke the cycle decades ago and only these people can take advantage of the system. Again I understand this is not true for all cases, but this still needs to be addressed in policy considering that reservations are going to going on for several decades to come. But when the government lazily just keeps increasing reservation without doing the background work, reservation is not having the intended effect and it comes at the cost the general category. And that cost needs to be taken into consideration when forming policies)

It is also especially infuriating that the actual institutions that have the ability to directly force and compel change/ empower disadvantage communities directly irrespective of whether society is ready or not i.e., the Judiciary(HC/SC) and Parliament (Important Departments/Committees) don't have reservations.

No one has said the system is flawless and can't be criticised and you have made some good points, but half the criticism of it seems to boil down to: there is no such thing as caste discrimination anymore in India and everyone who gets in under reservations is rich. And even if that is the case, is that not part of the aim of reservations, to make several people slightly better off over generations, on average, to begin to remove stigmas and stereotypes and economic disadvantages from being associated with the groups?

However, you could also argue that it's a lottery and doesn't do enough on that front and fast enough and othe programmes would be more effective (unless your argument is, screw it, let's not do anything to uplift SC and STs.

The argument I still haven't heard is why it is not possible to have means-tested reservations also, based purely on income? Do people just cheat too much on their tax returns for this to be feasible?

Hi I'm child of single parent. Let me know where I can cash in on my sweet parental wealth and influence. Also my dad. Clearly all I need to do is find him and force him to handover that upper caste Hindu privilege.... oh wait he was Christian. But it would be foolish to think of the general category as anything but a monolith of "rich upper caste Hindu."

Obviously there are no good faith criticisms on how reservation is implemented in India, its not like sizable chunk of reservations are used for generations by the same families at the cost of the general category (who are totally privileged and immune from any systemic failure in governance/economy/life), or by our peers privy to all the privileges we had growing up.

No, reservations are only used used by ST/SC's from "remote villages/ghettoes" where the Government has obviously held up their bargain of providing a public school system that allows such people to actually be eligible and equally competitive as their ST/SC brethren who have grown up in cities and towns.

And all who use reservations have selfless motives, they go on to become great social reformers fighting to end caste discrimination thereby making the whole system of reservation defunct in some distant future ( timelines don't matter when the general category students make the sacrifice.)

This system is flawless and all who oppose are privileged bigots.

Not just girls quote.
The entire reservation system is outdated as pointed out above, only used as a political agenda, and the incumbent supporting apex court couldn't agree more.
EWS totally makes sense, not the reservations based on caste, religion, gender (some committees in my college reserve places for those who identify as trans or queer), fathers previous job, as in the present time they are antagonistic to the whole point of reservation.

Yes, the women quota is an interesting point: how do people feel about this? Women do make up the majority of many law college populations, don't they?

On the other hand, it could be argued that the existence of such reservations acts as a tiny disincentive to things such as dowry, female infanticide and the continuing disadvantage of women. And the more senior ranks of the profession are still heavily skewed towards men, so arguably every little now can help shift the balance for the future?

Also, anything that stops campuses being boys' clubs has to be a good thing, no?

Quote:

Technology and economic liberalisation have removed the barriers they face.

It's not quite true though, is it? Caste discrimination is still practiced heavily, villages have ghettoes, some castes are still predominantly employed in 'professions' such as manual scavenging, there is a huge discrepancy in the basic education people from some backgrounds receive, many many of the 'elite' would not allow their children to marry into certain castes, etc.

The problem might seem less real, but if you go to rural India, it is still very very real and a raw deal for them...

Unless you have other solutions, getting rid of reservations will be 1) politically impossible, 2) unfair, effectively punishing and penalising those of a certain background.

This is how I see it:

- Assume 100 seats per NLU
- Bracket A: 50 SC/ST/OBC quota seats
- Bracket B: 10 EWS seats
- Bracket C: This leaves 40 merit seats
- If you implement 50% domicile in brackets A, B and C then you have only 20 merit seats which anyone in India can apply for (i.e. pure merit/ general merit seats).
- If you further have NRI and PWD seats, then the number goes down further.

This is clearly violative of Indra Sawhney. Another PIL must be filed and heard by a larger bench. Undoubtedly the judgment in Indra Sawhney means max 50% SC/ST/OBC/EWS/PWD etc and the remaining 50% pure merit/general merit seats based on CLAT score and nothing else.

All reservation should be stopped and merit should be give primacy. Simple as that. At most, we can have 20% reservation for EWS but no reservation on basis of caste. We are now in the 21st century when SC/ST people are not disadvantaged as before. Technology and economic liberalisation have removed the barriers they face. Also, it is a joke that the so-called OBC quota includes prosperous communities like Jats, Patels, Yadavs and Marathas.

The US Supreme Court will soon strike down the concept of affirmative action based on skin colour. Time we do the same with respect to caste.

Just saw on TV that the EWS quota has been upheld.

But the problem is that this takes up seats from the general quota, rather than the SC/ST/OBC quota. Thus, suppose an NLU has 100 seats, it should look like this (correct me if I am wrong):

1. 50 will be reserved for SC/ST/OBC (presumably including horizontal domicile)
2. 30 will be for general category EWS (presumably including horizontal domicile)
3. Maybe around 10 for so-called NRI-sponsored seats (basically capitation seats, excluding including horizontal domicile)
4. Maybe around 2 for PWD
5. That leaves only 8 pure merit seats (i.e.marks in CLAT and NOTHING else, no horizontal domicile).

If this is correct, then it means that almost every student in an NLU will be the beneficiary of some quota or the other. This puts general category students from the middle class are in a real fix. They are "too rich" for the EWS quota and too poor for the NRI/capitation seats, or for Jindal. Note there that this class consists of the following:

- Middle class Brahmins, Kshatriya (excluding Jats) and Vaishya Hindus
- Middle class Jains
- Middle class Sikhs
- Middle class Muslims (pending outcome of Supreme Court case on whether Muslims can get caste quota benefits)
- Middle class Christians (pending outcome of Supreme Court case on whether Christians can get quota benefits)
- Middle class Parsis

So what happens to this class of students, which is probably the dominant class in NLUs? Will they be forced to go take loans and apply for NRI/capitation seats and Jindal?

Most of all, isn't this really unfair? Or will law firms simply recruit more from Jindal and allow students to pay back these loans?