The Big Story: Reform and perish

Maharashtra is India’s richest state. It also houses the city of Mumbai, India’s economic powerhouse. Yet, today, one of the biggest political issues in the state is the fight for government jobs via the mechanism of caste reservations. Across Maharashtra, the dominant Maratha caste is holding massive rallies. The proximate reason is the brutal rape of a Maratha girl by four Dalit men. But the underlying causes are largely economic: the Marathas, long the economic backbone of Maharashtra, see no prosperity in their future.

This anger is directed at Dalit reservations. Although Dalits are far poorer than the Marathas, the Marathas desire reservations in educational institutions and government jobs like Dalits. Maratha reservations, put in two years ago, were scrapped within a year by the courts on the grounds that the Marathas weren’t backward enough. The anger seen in Maharashtra is also repeated in Gujarat, where another dominant caste, the Patels, have agitated for reservations. Similar movements have raged in Haryana as well as Andhra Pradesh.

India has, since the days of the Raj, placed a great premium on government jobs. Unlike in a developed capitalist economy like the United States, sarkari jobs were the ones primarily available at many points and certainly the most sought after. This is of course the problem that India’s 1991 economic reforms tried to solve, unchaining the private sector.

Today there are few dissenters when it comes to reforms and rightly so – they have brought a great amount of prosperity to the country. But clearly, India’s reforms, while a step in the right direction, are a drop in the ocean. India is seeing great rural distress since for a vast number of Indians, little has changed since 1991. This is why even powerful Marathas, Jats, Patels and Kapus are out on the streets. Rural distress has placed India on a precipice. She has to pull back by undertaking enough wealth redistribution that will allow India to function peacefully.

The Big Scroll

In Maharashtra, the Maratha demand for reservations is losing steam.

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