As a standard of review, the test of proportionality is associated by its supporters with substantively strong and transparent public reason-giving, as well as with a shift to a ‘culture of justification’. However, a stream of scholarship has emerged recently that explains the perceived weaknesses of the test. This has led some scholars to focus on how the standard of proportionality can be redesigned and applied in a way that addresses the concerns raised by the critics and best forwards the values associated with the test. Unfortunately, in the Indian context, where the Indian Supreme Court only recently adopted the proportionality test, there is little discussion of how the test should be designed and operated in practice. This paper therefore lays down a broad design principle that should guide this process, and then, in light of this principle, attempts to offer concrete guidance for coherently conceiving of and applying the four specific stages of the test