But even if all of this goes well — a big if — the political class should be ready for a set of questions they dodged again but one that will get uglier as the reservation ball keeps rolling; and this ball will keep rolling, witness some of the prescriptive commentary on the Sachar report. Despite the advice of the parliamentary standing committee, the bill has not excluded the creamy layer in OBC higher education reservations. This is an old vice, of course. The August 1997 recommendations of the Supreme Court-appointed committee on excluding creamy layers from OBC job quotas have never been implemented. But repetitions don’t right wrongs. And this time, after a wide-ranging debate, in the latter part of which came a Supreme Court ruling that favoured creamy layer exclusion for SCs/STs in government service promotions, there was a real chance to take another look at the issue.

It might interest our politicians that America is awaiting what is formally a US Supreme Court judgment on a dispute over racially integrated schools in Louisville, Kentucky but what could turn out to be a paradigm-shifting ruling on the constitutionality of affirmative action. Among the issues being furiously debated is whether preferential treatment should be given to children of African-American parents who have benefited from affirmative action and/or are clearly affluent. This has become the almost unanswerable question for those who support the principle of state-sponsored diversity in education and employment. If India’s political class wants quotas to retain broad popular support, it will be in their own interest to revisit the question of who deserves quotas.