Fixing the wrong problem

I am surprised at the lack of clarity on part of Government of India on the reservation issue.

The problem here is not that historically some castes had been given a raw deal, that is a fact.
Problem that they are supposed to solve is to ensure that individuals of free India do not get punished or promoted because of their caste.

What was the stated objective of doing all this reservation - Equality of status and oppertunities for all Indians.

What are they aiming at, to achieve the stated objective : reserving oppertunities for certain castes.

Can we achieve EQUALITY OF STATUS & OPPERTUNITY for ALL INDIANS thru Caste based reservations ?

For that matter can we achieve equality through reservations?
All Individuals are equal, as long as you have no reservations.
There has to be some way of identifying who should get that reserved seat , and the guy who gets it is NOT EQUAL TO EVERY INDIAN (otherwise you cant identify him).

Mundane example :
A long queue in front of the railway reservation (ironically) counter.
Here the merit is - first come first serve.
No reservations ( ;-) ) for reservation. ie issual of ticket is not based on caste creed colur.
As all people are identified as Indians.
Unless you put in a criteria that sets some people apart, you would not be able to give them special status.

Assume you have been standing in such a queue for last six hours and suddenly an officail in black coat comes out and announces that all people in blue shirts ( or shades of it) will get a preferance and will have a separate queue.
He eloborates the reason for it is that till last week there was a different guy at the ticket issual counter who had a partisan view towards the people in blue shirts. That guy used to send the guys in blue shirts to the back of the queue once they had reached the counter. This guy in black coat wants to avenge for the mistakes of his predecessor, and ofcourse establish equality through this.
What will be your reaction?
Caste is to our society , what a the colur of shirt is to the queue.
The people who had suffered three months or three years back, are not there in the queue, but the people with similar colur of shirt ( or the caste) are there now.
__________________________________________________________________
Now lets talk about something else. About the strategy or the method itself (assuming that the aim was right, is the strategy to reach that aim correct?)

Why are they reserving seats for various scheduled castes and scheduled tribes ( and the list has been growing) .

Why not create reservations one homogeneous block of reservation for all who need reservation as per their logic.
Everyone knows it will not work.
Lets drill down, Why is it a problem?

Stated reason : This will not provide equality for all. (taking from the above example, there are people with royal blue and some with sky blue coloured shirt)
We will not say it is vote bank, and agree to their logic momentarily.

So you identify subgroups. ( Scheduled caste & Scheduled Tribe -two groups)
Does it serve the purpose?
No. ( example : sky blue complete shirt or sky blue collors only)

So you identify sub sub groups ( break homogeneous scheduled caste group into sub groups)

Does it serve the purpose
No. They still want more divisions.
(Same tribe in UP might be more oppressed and in larger number than say in Kerala, you actually need more divisions , as you cant achieve your stated objective)

Where can it actually stop ?
Ofcourse at the individual level - from where you cant break it into any smaller group.

So can you reserve seats for everyone, whose great grand parents were at a disadvantage?
Is this method/strategy implementable fully ? Can you reserve seats for every SC/ST?
_________________________________________________________________
Assuming this process is a time taking one ( as we and our parents have seen it evolve) , let us look at the impact on the society at large ( or the queue discused in our example.)

Those who have merit but are aware that they may loose because of this system will look for places to study / settle where such system is not in place ( natural , if you were in the queue mentioned in the example , you might quit the queue and look for alternate means of travel) .

People will give up faith in the system, and try to break the system. Some youth will get into revolt mode, or worse resort to unlawful methods to success. (if you had a set of like minded individuals in the queue who had no strain of blue/or were in favour of justice , you might try to throw this new guy at reservation counter out of office. OR worse just board the train without ticket and evade / fight the ticket checker)

What do we need?
More oppertunities. And ofcourse Equality. You cant undo what happend pre-independence. Post independence it is goverment's job to ensure that there is no racial discrimination.

The revolution will happen once we have more oppertunities than the people to avail them.
More options for reaching out to where they want to go.

Government needs to focus on creating new oppertunities. And they better do it fast.