Q.Consider the following situations. Is special and differential treatment justified in any of the following? Working women should receive maternity leave. A school should spend money to buy special equipment for two visually challenged students. Geeta plays brilliant basketball, so the school should build a basketball court for her. Jeet's parents want him to wear a turban in school, and Irfan's parents want him to pray on Friday afternoon, so the school should accommodate both.

Differential treatment is justified when it removes a genuine barrier that stops someone from equally enjoying a right others already have — not simply when it rewards individual talent. …

Working women receiving maternity leave is justified. This matches the chapter's own discussion of the women's movement directly: without maternity leave, women cannot meaningfully exercise the same right to work that men already have, because only women bear the physical demands of childbirth. This is differential treatment that enables equal enjoyment of an existing right — not a special favour.

A school spending money on special equipment for two visually challenged students is justified. This matches the chapter's own disabled-ramps example directly: without adapted equipment and materials, visually challenged students cannot access the same education that sighted students already receive as a matter of course. The spending equalises real access to something already available to others; it does not grant a privilege.

Geeta's school building a basketball court because she plays brilliant basketball is not the same kind of case. This is not about removing a barrier that stops Geeta from equally accessing something others already have — it is about the school specially investing in the further development of one already-talented individual. Nurturing individual excellence can be a legitimate decision for a school to make on other grounds, but it is not an application of the equality principle in the way the other cases are: nothing here corrects unequal ACCESS to an existing opportunity, and dedicating scarce resources to one student's personal talent could, if anything, raise its own equal-opportunity question about other students who might want facilities for their own chosen activity. …