Reservation policy and its implementation across domains in India : an analytical review

India has the world's oldest and one of the most comprehensive affirmative action policies in the form of reservations or quotas for its disadvantaged sections, and this monograph reviews the current public policy that remains the most controversial and polarizing one that India has adopted. Recognizing that there is a lack of data-based understanding of its enforcement, this publication pools data from various sources and highlights the need for analytical information on affirmative action polices that can be linked across domains. It aids the discovery of the trends of implementation and how or what percentage of the population among these social groups have benefited from it. A comparison of all three domains in terms of implementation of reservation policies across different time periods and among different regions provides useful insights about these links. In doing so, this resource shares critical insights on the processes at work and identifies areas for further research.