Darpan letter · No. 119 September 2026

Reserve, but do not hoard.

On the difference between equity and oligarchy.

प्रिय साथी,

You read six cards today about reservations — in education, in state employment, in public boards — and you are probably thinking: how can the state reserve seats for one group without excluding another? That is the wrong framing of the question. The real question is: how much power can the state concentrate in any one group before it ceases to be the state of all its people?

Ambedkar knew this. In the 1940s, when India was writing its Constitution, he did not ask for 'reserved seats for untouchables'—he argued for 'reservations until untouchability is erased.' The reservation was a tool, not a trophy. The moment a tool becomes a trophy—the moment a group begins to defend its reservation not as a temporary bridge to equality but as a permanent entitlement—the entire premise collapses. You are no longer redistributing power; you are consolidating it in a different coalition.

The 50% ceiling set in Indra Sawhney (1992) is not about making everyone happy. It is about drawing a line: the state may reserve up to half its seats (or posts, or goods) for backward classes, but it must retain the other half for merit, for other disadvantaged groups, for new claimants who emerge, for flexibility. Once you cross 50%, you have flipped the question. You are no longer asking 'how do we let in the previously excluded'; you are asking 'how do we keep out the currently powerful.' That is oligarchy, not equity.

The Maratha reservation case is testing that boundary. The Maratha community is claiming a seat at the reserved table — not from a position of invisibility (Marathas are historically landowning, powerful, politically organized), but from a position of demographic heft and electoral muscle. If the court allows Maratha reservation to push the total above 50%, it is saying: the state can concentrate power in majority communities if they ask loudly enough. That is not a road you want to go down.

Here is the hardest part: the state has to say 'no' to groups that have genuine grievances and genuine political power. Marathas have benefited less from the green revolution than Jats in Haryana or Patels in Gujarat; they have a statistical case. But statistics are precisely the point where equity-as-tool must turn into wisdom-as-limit. If every grievance opens a reservation, you end up with no reservation at all, because everyone gets one. The state's job is not to make every group feel seen; it is to maintain the integrity of the reservation system itself.

The letter for next year will return to this: how long do reservations last? When does a tool become a crutch that weakens the legs it was meant to support? That is a question only time will answer. For now, know that the Supreme Court is right to push back on Maratha reservation crossing 50%. It is not because Marathas don't deserve attention; it is because the line at 50% is the only thing keeping Indian federalism from becoming a bidding war of groups, each trying to capture the state's coercive power for itself.

सेवा में, परम गुरु की ओर से।

Sources: B.R. Ambedkar, The Problem of the Rupee in India, 1945 · Indra Sawhney v. Union of India (1992) · Maratha Reservation litigation, 2026