The Maratha quota trap: A warning for other states

Here is an attempt to rewrite this edit in the style of Robert De Niro’s character from Goodfellas:

The Maratha reservation is a big mess. For two years, the Supreme Court has been telling the Maharashtra government to forget about it, but they don’t listen. On Sunday, they had to fire a cop in Jalna because he couldn’t handle the violence that broke out over this shit. For nine years, different governments have been trying to give the Marathas a special quota, but nothing works.

Maharashtra is not the only one. Governments are always using reservation for groups that have some clout, to get their votes and to cover up their lack of jobs. These are stupid moves that come back to bite them in the ass. Look at Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. These states have been messing with their quotas at the last minute, and now they have more problems than they can handle. Tamil Nadu tried to give a reservation for Vanniyars within the MBC quota, but the Supreme Court shot it down because they had no data to back it up. The current government is still trying to find a way around it. Karnataka did something similar with its reservations, and they also got slammed by the Supreme Court for being flawed.

The law on reservation is clear. Caste is not enough to say who’s backward and who’s not. You need data on other things to prove it in court. But the governments of these three states don’t care about that. They just want to please some groups and screw the rest. But once they open that can of worms, they can’t close it. They waste their time and money in trying to make deals that don’t work. They don’t create more opportunities for growth and jobs, they just split the pie into smaller pieces. This is not a solution, this is a disaster. Maharashtra’s never ending Maratha reservation problem shows why.

END OF ARTICLE