Charity, Not Parity
Upholding the EWS reservations exposes the Supreme Court’s limited understanding of social justice and equality.
Reservations, Justice Chinnappa Reddy famously said in K C Vasanth Kumar and Another v State of Karnataka (1985), were intended for parity, not charity. The rest of his judgment is a lucid and evocative summation of the social justice goals of the scheme of reservations in India. It remains a signpost that the judiciary, long resistant to such ideas of social justice, had come to accept what politicians and wider Indian society understood about the need for vertical reservations in jobs and education to create a truly equal India.
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About the Author
Alok Prasanna Kumar is Co-Founder and Lead, Vidhi Karnataka. His areas of research include judicial reforms, Constitutional law, urban development, and law and technology. He graduated with a B.A. LL.B. (Hons) from the NALSAR University in 2008 and obtained the BCL from the University of Oxford in 2009. He writes a monthly column for the Economic and Political Weekly and has published in the Indian Journal of Constitutional Law and National Law School of India Review apart from media outlets such as The Hindu, Indian Express, Scroll, Quint and Caravan. He has practiced in the Supreme Court and Delhi High Court from the chambers of Mr Mohan Parasaran, and currently also co-hosts the Ganatantra podcast on IVM Podcasts.