-Down to Earth How this backward district in Haryana has borne the brunt of stringent cow-related laws “How do you fit a veterinary doctor, fodder and a water tank inside a pickup van?” asks Nooruddin, sitting at a tea shop. The 50-year-old former goat keeper now marks buffaloes with colour at the animal market in Firozpur Jhirka for Rs 200, twice a week. Supplementary earnings working at a butcher shop take his...

-The Indian Express It would have made more sense — economically, legally, politically, morally, constitutionally — to have limited 10 per cent EWS reservation to those with farming or rural backgrounds The last few years have seen the so-called dominant farming communities — especially the Jats, Marathas, Patidars and Kapus — mount violent agitations demanding quotas in government jobs and higher educational institutions, whether under the OBC (Other Backward Class) or...

-TheWire.in In an interview with The Wire, former secretary to the government of India P.S. Krishnan says economically weaker sections require financial aid, not reservation. P.S. Krishnan, the former secretary to government of India, was one of the crucial people behind the enactment of several historic laws regarding social justice. The current Bill proposed by the government to provide reservation to economically weaker upper castes in jobs and education, he says, violates...

-The Indian Express Justice Jeevan Reddy in the Mandal judgment held that “a backward class cannot be determined only and exclusively with reference to economic criterion. It may be a consideration or basis along with and in addition to social backwardness, but it can never be the sole criterion...” The decision of the Union Cabinet to provide reservation of 10% for “economically weaker sections of the people who are not covered...

-Livemint.com Some perspectives on the issue seem to paper over the problem and get into comparisons There is much discourse on both the issue of agrarian distress and farmer suicides. However, there have been some arguments that seem to paper over the problem and get into comparisons—that the people who committed suicide just happened to be farmers; that they were not poor; that (as argued by Shamika Ravi of Brookings India) the...