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Showing posts from February, 2019

How recently introduced reservations can harm some social groups?

         I am trying to analyse the effects of income-based reservations in terms their effect on representation of SC, ST and OBC.  Consider the case of 10% income based reservation introduced by Central government. It is generally assumed that since income based reservation carves a separate 10% of resources (seats at education institute or jobs) than already existing quota, it will not harm the interest of groups already provided the reserved access. This harm argument assumes that the representation of social groups (SC, ST and OBC) will remain unchanged since new reservation is above/different than the pre-existing reservation. This naïve belief assumes that candidates from these social groups access the resource only through reservation . This assumption is not accurate (at least in all cases) and hence any new reservation is likely to change the representation of the social groups. The change in social group representation has welfare consequences as government jobs hold varyi