-Hindustan Times The next census, in 2021, is slated to count OBCs for the first time in 90 years. The commission, headed by former high court chief justice G Rohini, is giving the finishing touches to its report that will be submitted next month. A key government panel is likely to recommend radical changes to how the 27% reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) is implemented in India for jobs and...

-The Hindu A well-designed assignment mechanism is vital for the quota for economically weaker sections to work A new Constitution amendment provides 10% reservation to individuals from economically weaker sections (EWS) in the general category for government jobs and educational institutions in India. This law raises several implementation questions. Under the law, EWS applicants may even find it harder to obtain positions. These problems can be addressed using the science of matching...

-The Indian Express A two-year-long study jointly undertaken by the SPPU, JNU and Indian Institute of Dalit Studies has revealed that only 22.3 per cent of the country’s higher caste Hindus own 41 per cent of the country’s total wealth Pune: Caste continues to play a significant role in the educational and professional choices available to an individual, and the resultant income and assets, reveals a two-year-long study jointly undertaken by...

-The Telegraph Review petition to be filed in Supreme Court against judgment that calls for department as unit for working out quotas The government on Thursday admitted before a parliamentary panel that the Scheduled Tribes would virtually be left without reservation in college and university teachers’ jobs if each department is considered the unit for calculating the quotas, as mandated by the courts. Human resource development ministry officials who appeared before the panel...

-The Hindu Business Line Sociologist Dipankar Gupta discusses the dynamics of political mobilisation and the politics of reservation. Excerpts from an interview to Poornima Joshi: * The Indian state’s failure to provide the basics — universal education and healthcare — has never become the rallying point for political mobilisation. Why is that? The more cleavages of class, caste, language, race a society has, the more difficult it is to practise democracy. Democracy works...