-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Union cabinet on Thursday approved an ordinance to restore the system of reservation for SCs, STs and OBCs for teaching positions in higher education institutions, with the university or college being considered as one unit instead of treating the department as one. The Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Teachers' Cadre) Ordinance, 2019 will restore the 200-point roster system for faculty recruitment under which quotas for...

-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...

-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 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...

-The Hindu Instead of addressing inequality, the 10% quota for economically weaker sections creates huge anxieties If the number of demands for implementing reforms is any guide, India’s reservation system is clearly in disarray. However, it is unlikely that the recently passed Constitution (124th Amendment) Bill, 2019, creating a 10% quota for the economically weaker sections (EWS), will serve as anything more than a band-aid. Given the deep inequalities prevalent in access to...