Many countries in the world make special institutional arrangements to guarantee the political representation of minorities. Such measures ensure the descriptive characteristics of politicians who get to power, but not whose interests they represent. It is often assumed that the presence of minority representatives will translate into improved substantive representation for the minority. This article explores the development effects of reserved seats for the Scheduled Castes (SCs) in Indian state assemblies 1971-2001, using evidence from 70 in-depth interviews and a unique dataset of development indicators for more than 3000 state assembly constituencies (political districts) in 15 Indian states. I am able to control for the selection bias inherent in quotas being non-randomly assigned in the 1970s by matching constituencies on pretreatment variables from 1971. Comparing these matched constituencies over time, I find that 30 years of quotas had neither a positive nor a negative effect on development indicators for SCs in reserved constituencies. Interviews with politicians and civil servants in India in 2010 and 2011 show that the no-impact findings can be explained by the electoral incentives provided by the quota system, as well as the power of political parties in nominating candidates, socializing politicians and controlling vote choice in the legislative assemblies. These findings show that we cannot take it for granted that minority politicians will work actively to benefit their own group once in power, as incentives may be stronger than identity in shaping the actions of politicians.