Healthcare Bills, College Fees, and No Jobs: The Real Quota Marathas and Maharashtra Needs is in Affordability
The Maratha agitation dominating Maharashtra today is being presented as a simple fight for reservation under the OBC category. Thousands are on the streets, leaders like Manoj Jarange are on indefinite fasts, and the state government finds itself caught between constitutional limits and political compulsions. But the real story is deeper. This is not just about caste certificates. It is about something far more fundamental: the rising price of education, unaffordable healthcare, and a bleak job market that has left Marathas feeling abandoned in their own state.
For years, governments have dangled reservation as the ultimate solution. A law here, a promise there, a committee extension when pressure mounts. Each time, the courts strike down poorly drafted quotas, citing the 50% constitutional cap. The cycle repeats: agitation, political promises, and inevitable betrayal. Meanwhile, the lived reality of the Maratha community remains unchanged. They see themselves slipping from their once dominant status in Maharashtra’s villages and politics into a position of economic vulnerability. And they are right to ask: if reservation is the answer, why hasn’t it worked despite decades of promises?
At the heart of the crisis is education. College admissions in Maharashtra have become a luxury. Professional courses in medicine, engineering, or law often demand fees running into lakhs, far beyond the reach of farmer families in Marathwada or Vidarbha. What makes this worse is the ownership structure of these institutions. Many are run by politicians—ironically, Maratha leaders themselves—who have turned education into a business empire. Families are forced into debt, paying capitation fees, donations, and inflated tuition. A caste certificate won’t save a student from those bills. What would is a serious expansion of public universities, stricter regulation of private colleges, and a transparent fee cap that doesn’t get undermined by loopholes. But those reforms never come, because they cut directly into the profit streams of the very leaders claiming to fight for Maratha rights.
Healthcare tells a similar story. Rural Maratha families live one medical emergency away from bankruptcy. Public hospitals in districts remain understaffed, ill-equipped, and unable to provide quality treatment. Private hospitals have stepped in, but they charge bills that wipe out a family’s savings overnight. Again, many of these hospitals are controlled by the same political class that sheds tears during protests. Instead of building robust rural healthcare networks, governments allow private healthcare to flourish unchecked, while refusing to cap treatment costs. The result is predictable: anger that manifests as a demand for reservation, when in truth the demand is for dignity and protection against financial ruin.
Jobs are the third pillar of the crisis. Government jobs—the traditional aspiration of the Maratha youth—are shrinking. Those that remain are filled under intense competition. The private sector, meanwhile, offers insecure contract-based work with poor wages. Other states like Karnataka and Haryana have taken steps to reserve portions of private-sector jobs for locals. Maharashtra, despite having one of the most vocal youth populations, has failed to act. For young Marathas, this absence of opportunity is devastating. In their eyes, reservation is not just a caste entitlement, but their last hope in a system where the state refuses to create dignified job pipelines.
The real quota Marathas need, then, is not in caste percentages but in affordability and dignity. Affordable education. Affordable healthcare. Secure jobs. These are not luxuries, they are rights. Yet Maharashtra’s governments have ignored them for decades, choosing instead to recycle the reservation promise. Each collapse of a quota law has only deepened the sense of betrayal. Each broken promise has widened the gulf between the political elite and the ordinary Maratha farmer or student. The agitation today is the result of accumulated frustration at being reduced to vote banks rather than citizens with real needs.
The irony is cruel. Marathas have dominated the chief minister’s chair more than any other community in Maharashtra’s history. Yet their ordinary members are in the streets, begging for recognition and relief. If their leaders had invested in public universities instead of private colleges, in government hospitals instead of private ones, in industrial clusters instead of political cooperatives, the agitation may not have existed at all. Instead, decades of neglect have left the Maratha community trapped between expensive schools, exploitative hospitals, and an unforgiving job market.
Reservation will remain tied up in legal battles. Courts may strike it down again. But unless the state addresses the crux—affordability of education and healthcare, and security of jobs—the protests will not stop. The agitation is not just a fight for quota, it is a fight for survival in modern Maharashtra. Marathas are not asking for charity. They are asking for fairness in a system where the basics of life are out of reach.
Maharashtra doesn’t need another promise of reservation. It needs a quota in fairness: capped school fees, regulated hospital costs, and jobs for its youth. Until then, the cycle of protests, betrayals, and anger will continue, leaving the state in permanent agitation.
