  Sanctioned by its constitution, India is home to an elaborate affirmative
action program for allocation of public jobs, where historically discriminated
groups are protected with vertical reservations implemented as "set asides,"
and other disadvantaged groups are protected with horizontal reservations
implemented as "minimum guarantees." Concurrent implementation of these two
policies with overlapping beneficiaries makes this program more complex than
others elsewhere. An allocation mechanism mandated by the Supreme Court
judgement Anil Kumar Gupta vs. Uttar Pradesh (1995) suffers from a number of
anomalies, including disadvantaged candidates losing positions to privileged
candidates of lower merit, triggering countless litigations and disarray in the
country. Foretelling a recent reform in India, we propose an alternative
mechanism that resolves all anomalies, and uniquely characterize it with
desiderata reflecting the laws of India. Subsequently reinvented with an August
2020 High Court judgement and mandated for the state of Gujarat, our mechanism
is endorsed for India with a December 2020 judgement of the Supreme Court.
