Election in Pincodes: Maratha quota turmoil deepens caste fault lines
HT looks at some key constituencies across the country that encapsulate the issues shaping the ongoing Lok Sabha electoral contest.
Beed: Close your eyes and conjure the image of an Indian village with Dickensian poverty, and you may find yourself at Kathoda, 28 kilometres from the unremarkable town of Beed in Marathwada. Arid ridges of dried up mud mark the agricultural fields, and travelling on the unpaved roads can take anything up to an hour-and-a-half to traverse 20 kilometres. The only spot of colour under the harsh sun are the blue-and-black and pink-and-yellow plastic water drums and containers that line the roads, a testament to Marathwada’s acute water scarcity.
The dams are dry, the reservoirs are dry and every morning the district magistrates despatch one tanker of brackish water to each village of 200 families and above. The highlight of the day then is how much water a family can collect for themselves. Last monsoon as against the average rainfall of 566 mm, Marathwada received only 409.3 mm.
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Of the eight dams and reservoirs that supply drinking water to Beed district, four have no water, two have less than 3.57% of water stock while the remaining two have 13.43 and 22.04% of the water stock. With the monsoon another five weeks away, farmers are struggling to avail fodder and water for their cattle, says Dwarkatai Waghmare, a resident of Kathoda. In her early 50s, Dwarakatai was a sugar cane cutter until a few years ago. The village of about 200 families has over 70 koyatas (pairs of cane cutters) who migrate to sugarcane fields in western Maharashtra for six months of the year for harvesting. Over 60% of cane cutters who work in the sugar bowl of Maharashtra are from Beed.
Dwarkatai draws up a list of issues that impact their daily life — from lack of health care and education facilities to scarcity of water and large-scale migration of the male folk. But the big issue in this election for her is something else, she says, pointing to a photograph of Dr BR Ambedkar hanging inside her house. She is convinced that BJP, should it win handsomely, will scrap the Constitution.
“The Constitution gave us the right to live with dignity. It has given us the reservation for which other castes are now struggling even years after Independence. The government has shut down zila parishad schools affecting our fundamental right to education. We will keep all this in mind when we go to vote on May 13,” she says fiercely, utterly convinced by the ‘secret message’ behind the BJP’s ‘Abki baar 400 paar’ (This time, we’ll cross 400) slogan.
“The real issues of unemployment, education, atrocities against cane-cutters have all taken a backseat,” says Ashok Tangade of Jagar Pratisthan, a non-governmental organisation that works for social equality. “The election will be fought on the issue of caste and religion instead.”
The Beed Lok Sabha constituency was the BJP’s stronghold in senior leader Gopinath Munde’s lifetime.
Munde, a Wanjari tribal, and Pramod Mahajan, a brahmin, were the two men responsible for the rise of the BJP in what was once a Congress-minded state. His younger daughter Pritam is the sitting MP from Beed but was ditched by the party this time, in favour of his elder daughter Pankaja.
His nephew Dhananjay is an MLA from Nationalist Congress Party, Ajit faction, and is a sitting minister in the state government. While the compulsions of the ruling coalition mean that her cousin will support her campaign, fact also is that the two cousins are estranged especially after Dhananjay Munde contested against her in the 2019 assembly elections and defeated her, which resulted in long political wilderness. In addition to the ambiguity between the two cousins, Pankaja Munde is also dogged by reports of her sister Pritam’s so-called “non-performance” as MP that led to the BJP replacing her.
“The central leadership was not happy with the performance of the sitting MP who failed to utilise her funds. The implementation of the central schemes was poor and she failed to implement infrastructure projects in the constituency as well,” said a BJP leader from the district, requesting anonymity.
Unrest among Beed’s sizeable Dalit and the Muslim voters and the consolidation of the Maratha votes have suddenly turned the Beed contest into a challenging one for Pankaja Munde. She is up against Bajrang Bappa Sonawane, a Maratha from the NCP-Sharad Pawar faction.
“The Maratha community, which accounts for about 700,000 voters in the constituency—mainly comprising cane cutters, farm and construction labourers who struggle financially. For years they stood by the Munde family but this year, for the first time, they have consolidated as a vote bank after Manoj Jarange-Patil’s 8-month-long reservation stir,” says an NCP (SP) leader from the district.
Across the state that sends the second-highest number of parliamentarians to the Lok Sabha, the unrest among the region’s most-dominant community – Marathas make up about a third of the state’s population and a majority of the state’s chief ministers have come from the group – is among the biggest issues in these elections. This discontent is directly connected to the years-long agitation for the Maratha quota that appeared to have come to a head last year. And nowhere is this dichotomy more apparent than in Beed, once considered among the strongholds of the BJP but where the party’s campaign appears to be stuck between the demands of the Maratha community and the consequent anger among another vote bank of the party – the other backward classes (OBCs)
The Maratha stir
The demand for quotas by Marathas is decades old, but in 2018, the state government granted 16% reservation in the face of sweeping protests that paralysed the state and saw large marches from the hinterland to Mumbai. It was later slashed to 13% in jobs and 12% in education by the Bombay high court. But in 2021, the Supreme Court quashed the move.
The current crisis began last year, when protesters demanding OBC status for Marathas was lathicharged by the police in Jalna – the site of the hunger strike by Jarange-Patil. Under pressure, chief minister Eknath Shinde announced that Marathas from the central Maharashtra region can access reservation under the OBC category if they produce a certificate from the Nizam era classifying them as Kunbi.
But the order – which opened the window for quotas for the community – left all sides unhappy. The Maratha groups said they wanted reservations without any stipulation, and not just for the eight central Maharashtra districts. The OBC and Kunbi groups feared their quotas would be eaten into by the fresh entrants.
Kunbis get reservation in the OBC category while Marathas come under the general category. Jarange-Patil and some Maratha outfits say that until the Nizam rule was dismantled in September 1948 in central Maharashtra, the Marathas were considered Kunbis, and were effectively OBCs.
Jarange-Patil, who is not contesting the elections but is addressing some rallies, has repeatedly gone on hunger strike, but has been convinced by the government to call it off each time. At the heart of the crisis is the fact that many Marathas feel that their political dominance isn’t matching their social and economic status, and are resentful of the advances made by some other communities.
But the flare-up of emotions and protests among the Marathas has also sparked strong consolidation from other communities, especially OBC groups who have dug in their heels. This has meant some embarrassing moments for the BJP, which is managing an unwieldy coalition of three parties in Maharashtra as Maratha and OBC leaders within the government have publicly sparred. OBC leaders have organised their own protests, saying they won’t give up their share of reservation for anyone else and the government should consider giving the Maratha quota from the open category.
This fault line is deep in Beed. If the Lok Sabha constituency has 700,000 Maratha voters, there are also 900,000 OBC voters, including 375,000 Wanjari voters from Munde’s own community, 275,000 Muslim voters and another 250,000 scheduled caste (SC) voters.
Stirring this pot was Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s campaign speech this week, where he said the Congress and the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) will cancel reservations and give them to Muslims, a claim that has greatly upset local Muslims who have traditionally voted for the Munde family.
The PM’s reference to the inclusion of Muslims among the OBC categories in neighbouring Karnataka, ruled by the Congress, has also upset the Marathas who have been seeking reservation under the OBC quota on similar grounds, said local political analyst Vasant Beed. “However, Modi’s speech could also see a consolidation of OBCs and forward class voters who account for over 9 lakh votes in the constituency and this could help Munde,” he added.
Everything has become muddied, complains Beed-based advocate KS Pandit who is affiliated with the Congress. “If the Marathas and Muslims are disturbed over the issue of reservation being raked up, the scheduled caste voter is anxious over the perception that the BJP would change the Constitution to drop reservation altogether. Voters are also upset about the stranglehold over power and resources by one family and their community, the Wanjaris,” he added.
Pankaja Munde said she was confident of defending her family turf.
“Modiji’s rally was a grand success, it will help me win by a big margin,” she said. “While it is true that the consolidation of a particular community (Marathas) is an issue in this election, they also know that I have always stood for their interest,” she added.
Munde’s optimism also stems from the fact that five of the six sitting MLAs in Beed Lok Sabha constituency, including Dhananjay Munde, are from the ruling alliance. The sole MLA who supports her opponent Sonawane is the Beed MLA Sandeep Kshirsagar from NCP (SP). “The sitting MLAs control cooperative sector organisations with which thousands of voters are associated. This gives an edge to the candidate who has the support of maximum MLAs,” said Vasant Munde.
But Manish Tokale, president of Jagar Pratishthan, has a different view. “Usually that may be the case but in this particular election, people have been telling the sitting BJP and NCP (Ajit Pawar) MLAs to not force them to vote for their candidate. The voters have seemingly made up their mind on the basis of caste and religious equations,” he says.
Munde’s opponent Bajrang Sonawane turns the argument around and says any campaigning on caste and religious lines is being done by her and the BJP. “They have done nothing in the last ten years. People are upset, farmers are upset, and the Marathas are upset. Pankaja tai may be the daughter of a tall leader, and may have legacy on her side, but my father was a farmer and I too proudly represent that legacy.”
This is the 22nd in a series of election reports from the field that look at national and local issues through an electoral lens.
