Will Quotas Work When “There Are No Jobs”, Asks Nitin Gadkari

Stating that reservation will not guarantee employment as jobs are shrinking, Union minister Nitin Gadkari has said there is a “school of thought” which wants policy-makers to consider the poorest of poor in every community.

Gadkari was responding to reporters’ questions on the ongoing agitation by the Marathas for reservation and similar demands by other communities in Maharashtra yesterday.

“The problem with the quota is that backwardness is becoming a political interest. Everyone says I am backward. In Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, Brahmins are strong. They dominate politics, (and) they say they are backward,” Gadkari added.

“So one school of thought is that a poor is a poor, he has no caste, creed or language. Whatever may be the religion--the Muslim, the Hindu or the Maratha (a caste), in all communities there is one section which has no clothes to wear, no food to eat,” Gadkari elaborated.

“One school of thought also is (that) we must also consider the poorest of the poor section in every community...which is a ‘socio-economic thinking’ and must not be politicised,” the Union Minister said.

Maintaining that Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis was trying to resolve the Maratha quota demand by holding talks, Gadkari urged people to maintain peace.

The development, industrialisation and good prices for rural produce would ease the economic distress that the Maratha community is suffering from, he said.