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In the spring of 2006, thousands of students in India went on strike to protest the expansion of affirmative action in higher education. Medical students, dressed in their white coats, took up brooms and swept the streets to suggest that they will become untouchable "sweepers" if the policies are implemented. India's reservation policies, which set aside a quota of seats for lower-caste and tribal applicants in higher education and government employment, are among the oldest and most far-reaching affirmative action policies in the world. In the last year, the Indian government has expanded the scope of the reservations to include colleges that receive no government aid (ninety-third constitutional amendment) and announced plans to increase quotas in higher education (including the renowned and fiercely competitive Indian Institutes of Technology) to 49.5 percent of seats. Given these developments, Arvind Sharma's book is a timely contribution to the debate over reservations.
Sharma is not the first to compare affirmative action in India and the United States, but his philosophical approach sets his work apart from other recent comparative works. Rather than researching, as others have, the constitutional and legal status of affirmative action (see Marc Galanter, Law and the Backward Classes in India [New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991]; and Devanesan Nesiah, Discrimination with Reason? The Policy of Reservations in the United States, India and Malaysia [New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997]), the impact of affirmative action in terms of quantitative costs and benefits (see Thomas E. Weisskopf, Affirmative Action in the United States and India [New York: Routledge,...