Lord Meghnad Desai: He argued caste is not a good "label" for reservation in education and that the Government should have identified more "objective" criteria to find out those who needed help. he suggests a gigantic web of national merit scholarships instead of setting up huge public educational institutions at enormous cost.
LR Naik (Mandal Commission's only dissenting member): He feared that upper OBCs would monopolise Mandal jobs, and therefore argued for splitting the Mandal quota into two in order to safeguard interests of Most Backward Castes. His proposal was rejected to appease the powerful upper OBC vote bank.
Amartya Sen: He questions the very idea of merit, by arguing that the concept of "merit" is anything but 'clear' as it is deeply dependent on our views of a good society and hence is largely subjective. He argues that for affirmative action to be effective, both class and caste backgrounds need to be taken into consideration.