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How to De-Reserve Reserves: Admissions to Technical Colleges in India

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  • Orhan Aygün

    (Department of Economics, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul 34342, Turkey)

  • Bertan Turhan

    (Department of Economics, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011)

Abstract

We study the joint implementation of reservation and de-reservation policies in India that has been enforcing comprehensive affirmative action since 1950. The landmark judgment of the Supreme Court of India in 2008 mandated that whenever the OBC category (with 27% reservation) has unfilled positions, they must be reverted to general category applicants in admissions to public schools without specifying how to implement it . We disclose the drawbacks of the recently reformed allocation procedure in admissions to technical colleges and offer a solution through “de-reservation via choice rules .” We propose a novel priority design— Backward Transfers (BT) choice rule —for institutions and the deferred acceptance mechanism under these choice rules (DA-BT) for centralized clearinghouses. We show that DA-BT corrects the shortcomings of existing mechanisms. By formulating India’s legal requirements and policy goals as formal axioms, we show that the DA-BT mechanism is unique for the concurrent implementation of reservation and de-reservation policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Orhan Aygün & Bertan Turhan, 2023. "How to De-Reserve Reserves: Admissions to Technical Colleges in India," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(10), pages 6147-6164, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:69:y:2023:i:10:p:6147-6164
    DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2022.4566
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    Cited by:

    1. Mustafa Oğuz Afacan & Inácio Bó & Bertan Turhan, 2023. "Assignment maximization," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 25(1), pages 123-138, February.
    2. Aygün, Orhan & Turhan, Bertan, 2024. "A Tale of Two Supreme Court Rulings on Indian Affirmative Action," ISU General Staff Papers 202403062012060000, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    3. Orhan Aygün & Bertan Turhan, 2023. "Priority design for engineering colleges in India," Indian Economic Review, Springer, vol. 58(1), pages 5-15, July.

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