ABSTRACT
EWS quota and the upper-caste state-wide quotas rely on the argument of negating the social basis of discrimination and disadvantage and collapsing status-based harms into pure-economic and often only income-based group classification techniques for identifying the beneficiaries of reservations. The preceding chapters outline the importance of understanding economic disadvantage, and any systemic analysis of the EWS reservations and state interventions will be insufficient without outlining how socio-economic, pure-economic disadvantage is construed in discrimination law theory. Particularly if we are to assume the sanctity of the economic disadvantage, the meaning of class becomes relevant, and this chapter evaluates both above questions in detail while critiquing the Indian reservation developments.
