Quota tricks don’t work

With an eye on the coming Assembly polls and fear of decimation at the hands of the BJP-Shiv Sena combine, Maharashtra CM Prithviraj Chavan has cynically added two more categories to the already high percentage of reservation in the state.

With the addition of quotas of 16 per cent and five per cent for the Marathas and Muslims, respectively, Maharashtra now has 10 categories of communities cornering reservation amounting to a massive 72 per cent. The Marathas constitute 36 per cent of the population and Muslims 12 per cent.

Mr Chavan and his colleagues have obviously not learnt any lessons from the humiliating defeat of the Congress, particularly in Maharashtra where it won just two of the 42 seats. It is amazing that someone like Mr Chavan, who is unpopular in his own party, fails to see the writing on the wall: giving out dole and pampering certain communities are no longer vote-catchers.

This was dramatically reflected in the defeat of the Congress in the Jat-dominated states even though the UPA government had given generous quotas to the community before the LS polls. Beggaring a population and then giving them doles seems to be in the Congress’ DNA.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with his emphasis on development, has changed this Congress paradigm. What people want are employment, health facilities and education. As the 2014 election results revealed unmistakably, people are aspirational and no longer beggars waiting for dole. They want to be in the development mainstream.