Reservation or recognition?

Maratha quota storm has reignited the debate: Is poverty a fairer base than caste for reservation?

- Saachi Shinde

Mumbai has seen countless protests, but the late-August agitation led by Manoj Jarange-Patil was different.

Promised as a peaceful sit-in, it swelled into a massive rally that paralysed the city's heritage district. Within days, the Maharashtra government issued a Government Resolution (GR) on September 2, 2025 allowing Marathas with proof via the Hyderabad Gazetteer to obtain Kunbi caste certificates and claim benefits under the OBC quota. On 17 September, five Marathwada districts began issuing Kunbi certificates to Maratha youth on Liberation Day-showing how eagerly communities pursue any path to reservation.

However, instead of calming tensions, it sparked fresh divides-splitting Marathas and angering OBC groups who saw it as an intrusion into their share.

Do all Marathas want it?

An uncomfortable question persists: do all Marathas truly want quotas, or is the agitation driven by leaders and politics? Traditionally, Marathas were a dominant caste-landowning, politically central, and socially influential. But recent decades have weakened that dominance. For young Marathas in rural areas, reservation feels like a lifeline-offering access to education, jobs, and security.

Roopa, senior leadership from a global IT company, reflects on the broader context, "Social equality is the reason Marathas are flexing their collective muscle and demanding this. From personal experience, it has been painful to watch less meritocratic candidates get ahead in life. Hence, demanding this privilege for oneself becomes the logical fallout. However, reservations have never solved problems-class and social systems still exist everywhere. So, what is the question we are trying to solve?" she questions.

Kunbi conundrum