Short Answer:

The Caste based reservation system is a inconclusive debate with no clear cut lines.
There is little evidence that it has made a difference to the poor over the forty years of
practicing it, but the system cannot be scrapped or changed easily as the social
disadvantages remain a contentious issue. There are no authoritative answers to this
one.
Long Answer:
The Indian Caste based reservation system and the arguments related to it have been the
subject of electoral promises, books, national debates, forum discussions and bar fights.
Since the past (or finding whos to blame) is the primary focus, these exercises hardly
result in anything productive. So, instead of talking about the religious past of the caste
system, what could have been done by our past leaders, taking a personal or emotional
view of this system, etc let us take an objective look at:

What the Reservation system hopes to achieve

Equality of opportunity & autonomy/social safety net Vs Equality of outcome debate

What percentage of poor people (urban vs rural) are present in India and the
number of disadvantaged people in this category

Number of disadvantaged people who have access to education/jobs

How many people benefit from reservation every year

Distribution of the reservation system - what percent of disadvantaged actually

benefit from this system.

How it has affected the demographics/income and society over the last few decades

How poverty rates have changed over the years

Has reservation changed anything in terms of caste distribution of the poor

Has reservation system improved quality & educational performance

How is the reservation system performing

The future
A brief idea can be formed from the Wikipedia article on this, I suggest you skim through
it before continuing:
Reservation in India
This is a condensed statistical analysis in the absence of comprehensive literature and
targeted at a very few people - so be warned that it is long and those not interested in
Indian policies or hate long answers should bail at this point. Most explanations are
using charts instead of statements. Emphasis is on education first and job sector second.
The problems of reservation and the present solutions are surprising to say the least.
Reservation system and its history:
The idea of caste based reservation system was envisioned by William Hunter and
Jyotirao Phule in various forms in 1882 and implemented by Chatrapati Sahuji in 1901.
The term was changed to "Depressed Class" in 1932 by Ambedkar and later to
"Scheduled Caste/Tribes" during the framing of the constitution in 1950. The idea was

that a vast majority of the poor were from a very small caste group and they needed a
social net so that they can be accommodated into society as full fledged members. It is
important to note that this part of the reservation was for electoral rights first (to
guarantee political representation - Poona Act 35) and a education/job rights issue
second. Also note that education was made free in these early attempts so that poverty
does not hinder their education by these early efforts. If not for Dr.Ambedkar's efforts,
even this would not have come through during Independence. Ambedkar remains an
icon for minority causes even today and is revered because of this. Enough of history.
Fast forward to today.
Objectives of Reservation:

Uplift lower strata of society

Ensure proper political representation of minority groups

Ensure that minorities are not discriminated in job selections and promotion
The caste based reservation system is built around these three objectives.
Equality of Opportunity & autonomy/social safety net Vs Equality of
Outcome:
In an Indian caste context, what this ideally means in theory is:

Equality of opportunity : If a member of lower strata applies to a job and has the
right qualifications and is a better performer compared to peers, he should get the
job. Ie, their caste/economic status should not decide which jobs they apply/get
selected to.

Equality of autonomy : If a member of lower strata wants to become a rocket

scientist, and has the intelligence and is willing to work towards this goal, there
should not be any barriers to pursuing this goal. Ie, they should not be at a
disadvantage when choosing their course of life because they were born
poor/belong to a particular caste.

Social safety net : When certain members of society did not have these privileges
earlier and the government wants to help them, certain non contributory (free)
measures are taken to help them. Ie, members of a disadvantaged group are given
free financial incentives so that they are not trapped in the present position/do not
fall into a life of crime and poverty. In short, a mid life boost to success.
Since the disadvantaged groups of India have been discriminated against for centuries,
and are still not protected despite the numerous laws(40% of crimes are committed
against this 22% of the population), before equality of opportunity and autonomy, a
social safety net is needed - ie a boost or ladder is required so that the more advanced
forms of equality can be introduced and society can be balanced.
Contrary to popular opinion, a social safety net is the most effective way to raise the
standards of disadvantaged groups - this has been proven using data from various
countries. It is fair discrimination. The key point here in the practice of this is - there
are no people from disadvantaged groups in the upper echelons of society, and as long as
they do not have a percentage equal to their share in the population in these elite groups
- administrative, education, political etc, these measures are necessary as they do not

have the economic or educational resources to get to the top. In short "Without access to education, the poor will always be poor"
These things sound great in theory. Opponents of caste based reservation(myself
included) have a valid opposing idea, which practically means:

Equality of outcome : By helping people even though they are not have equal
credentials/qualifications (reservation gives leeway of 10 - 40% reduction in various
parameters in India) it is not equality of opportunity but an unfair playing
field - there is no incentive for better performers and it becomesreverse
discrimination.
The catch with a social net is that it has to be done short term and reduced over a period
of time so that the other forms - opportunity and autonomy can take root and grow. This
never happened in India. Besides, reservation is not justified in niche fields and higher
education when a graduation is already a requirement - ie how many time should a
person get these life boosts when it they are already have the same qualification and
reached alevel playing field? At this point, a loan to fund education makes more
sense than a free pass irrespective of performance. In short "Reservation system based on a social net contradicts itself"
Government should not play Robin Hood
I will leave applying these concepts to job/education sectors to the readers imagination,
as it varies by sector and locality. Done with philosophy of reservation. On to real world
data.
Demographics related to Reservation:
The statistics for India related to reservation are:
Population of India, split up by caste:

Reservation percentage, split by caste:

Population Split by Religion (religious minorities are given quota in certain states):

Distribution of SC population, by state:

Highest incidence is in Punjab - 28.9%.

Distribution of ST population, by state:

The highest incidence is in Lakshadweep islands - 94.5%.

Percentages are almost the same when it comes to reserved percentage vs population
statistics.
Number of people with educational qualifications, by social strata:

Graduates are 3.6% of the general population (including SC and ST), whereas it is 1.4%
and 0.9% in SC and ST categories.

We are getting more kids admitted into schools (85% is really good) , but only 60% make
it to 5th grade and 52% to high school. Only 7% of those admitted into the school system
finally pass. Final graduation rates from colleges are close to 3.6%, as mentioned in the
previous chart. This is not because the kids are not able to perform academically, but
because of simple reasons like no teachers, financial dependency, etc. The relative
percentage of kids making it to secondary school and college has not improved over the
past 30 years.
Ie, admissions into primary education is increasing, but drop out rates and final
graduate output is almost the same. The number of graduates has increased, but not as a

relative percentage - it merely represents the increase in population.

Number of people who benefit from reservation every year:
Education : India has about 436 universities and 25938 colleges with about 2-3 million
graduates(if non technical diploma, etc are included) a year as of 2010. Educational
institutions are required to surrender 50% of their seats to the government and very few
minority run institutions are exempt from this. From that, 49% of the graduates benefit
from reservation, so about 25% or 0.75 million people are direct beneficiaries of
reservation in education. This percentage however varies between states and type of
study (medical vs engineering vs arts vs law etc) and type of institution (deemed, private,
minority run or trust run, government run colleges have 49.5% of their seats under the
quota).
Jobs :

The GoI (state,central,panchayats,etc in the same order of number of employees)

employs 17.8 million people or 3.6% of the total workforce of India (487 million workers)
and 8% of them retire annually (because a vast majority of them were hired during the
82-93), so that is 1.4 million vacancies. Because of this, 0.7 million people get jobs
under reservation quota annually. There is no data related to economic standing of
students, job seekers and their future income, but a fair argument can be made by
comparing wealth distribution over the past 40 years.
Distribution of Wealth and poverty rate:
Poor, in an Indian context implies absolute poverty - can't buy the next meal poor or the
person is unable to make Rs.20 (36 cents) a day. By international standards, it is $1.25 a
day and 32% of Indian population is poor by that definition.

Over the past 40 years, the reservation system has hardly changed anything in terms of
wealth distribution (one of its objectives) - the upper 20% of the society controls 40% of
the wealth, while the lower 20% is left with 7%.

This is the distribution of poor people by caste, accounting for split between rural and
urban population and normalising:

It is to be noted that upper castes account for 36% of poor people and backward classes
account for 16%. This 36% of poor people do not benefit from any of these Welfare
Schemes when it is based on caste.
The official numbers are always disputed by other agencies which say that poverty is
reducing by 8-12% annually like clockwork and Indian government is cooking the
numbers related to poverty. This deserves a mention here - according to them,

(Economist)

(Center for global development)

Performance of the Reservation system when compared to its stated
objectives:
Though lower strata term is relative, the reservation system has not changed anything
drastically when comparison of poverty rates and income of the bottom 20% of society is
relatively the same compared over the last 40 years. This is more evident in rural areas.
There are a significant portion of upper caste (6% of national population) who are poor
and do not benefit from reservation. Cost of education has increased 12.5X over the
previous decade - even the cheapest institutions have five percent inflation a year.
Overall, the Caste based reservation system has achieved very little for the rural poor and
has mostly fallen flat on its face in most of the metrics. It has failed because (unfair
debate left out, as what's fair to me may not be fair to someone else) :

It has not improved dropout rates

It has not improved income share of poor people

It has not performed in terms of quality of education (India ranks 72nd in the world
by PISA scale - pls comment if you want more details)

It is not inclusive of all the poor sections of society (poor upper castes are left out)

It is based on fixed percentages creating selection bubbles ie, there is no incentive to

perform for those with reservation and there is no motivation for those without
reservation as competition is higher

There is no data to support reservation based on caste has met any of its objectives
after 4 decades of practicing it

Future:
The caste based reservation system is a part of the Indian Constitution and unlikely to
change. The window of opportunity to make effective long lasting changes to any Indian
system is 10-15 years, and the political landscape is too busy on other things rather than
trying to wrap their wits around this. It has affected who we are as a society and it will
continue to affect future generations to come. The changes to this system can only be
made by a bold government prepared to take action with a long term vision and goals,
and that is not going to happen anytime soon.
There is no accountability in Indian politics
My take on this:
Reservation of any kind will not work 100% efficiently under the current scenario. I am
all for competing with a peer group which is fiercely competitive (I guess most Quorans
would agree as most of us would have done just that) and leaving a portion of
opportunities for poor people without resources, but in the current conditions it
is unfair to people competing in general quota and poor people - the data
proves it. While reservation is necessary for social good, I believe that in its current form
it is not helping the majority of the targeted audience and unfair to the others. Without
bringing poor kids who are out on the streets into a educational setting and retaining
them, reservation hardly justifies the negatives it has. It is archaic and should be
dispensed with in favor of aincome based reservation system, where quota
percentages are determined based on poverty levels, say every 5 years. Long term efforts
(spread over 20-30 years or a generation to take root) should be to phase out reservation
entirely in certain segments like higher education as equality of opportunity is provided
from primary education onwards. Same can be argued for the job sector.
Fine. After writing the income based reservation part, I got thinking that this measure
deserves to be scrutinised as well. Is it truly a good way to go about welfare schemes? So
I proceeded with some calculations to see if this argument has any reasoning behind it.
Implementing a income based reservation system is tougher than most people think:
Current public (read popular) demand:
Income based reservation, below poverty line with 49.5% quota:
If a reservation by income scheme is implemented retaining the 50.5:49.5 ratio of open
vs reserved quota, giving 49.5% for poor people below the poverty line, then all castes are
represented across the board:

(this is just to contrast caste split between the existing and proposed system - ST
category is actually under represented in the existing system)
This system would ensure that people who deserve the social net benefit from it while
relatively rich people compete among themselves as they have access to facilities etc.
Seems fair to everyone right? poor people get their quota irrespective of caste. Smiles all
around.
But there is a practical problem why this cannot be implemented - only 3% of poor
people make it to the stage where they can avail reservation - meaning even with 100%
enrollment rate in primary school, 47% of the 49.5% poor do not make it to high school.
There are no poor people below poverty line reaching high school to give away reserved
seats to (30% of engineering seats reserved for SC/ST students lapse in certain states
already, without this system). So, this scheme cannot be implemented without 47% of
seats lapsing to general students anyway.
Alternate Demand:
Income Based reservation, with relative income as a parameter between
students:
Implementing this system is dumb too. For instance, what really is the handicap that a
student with parents of income say Rs.400K a year have compared to a student with
parents having income of a 5 million rupees? Maybe in 70s, the rich parents hired a
super cool tutor, but in a digital world, the advantages are close to none - a broadband
connection makes these students even on access to resources and study materials as
textbooks, tutorials etc are available for free. This system, if implemented, would be a
farce on so many levels.
To conclude, we are back to where we were 60 years ago - there is a very poor, highly
discriminated section of society that needs help and we have no well defined educational
policy in practice on a national level that helps them.
So, whats the final solution?
I do not have a clear answer to this nor the expertise, but my take would be:
education reform spread over at least 2 decades is necessary, as there is no silver bullet
to this problem. The only way to help them is to improve the education system so that
more students are retained, and provide students with access to internet so that there is
equality in access to information.
Education:
A income based reservation system with reduced quota (30% among students below
poverty line) along with increased retention of students in terms of access to
education should be the priority short term. Long term, mainstream primary education
sector should be focussed on socialistic public education (public schools mostly suck
today), compulsory and partially free (retaining mix of private and public schools with
elements of Germany(Gymnasium system), China and UK education systems in the same
order) and higher studies should be capitalistic (elements from USA, China and UK
education systems in the same order). Private schools for the gifted and differently abled
should be allowed - with regulations. India can take a lot of inspiration from China in
this - these problems were faced by China 3 decades ago. China opened up its doors to
foreign universities and collaborations, which we have not done yet. Chinese schools are
ranked as the best right from primary education in terms of science, math and reading
skills. Instead of trying to write history books with an agenda, both state and central
governments should get started on these short term and long term changes on a war

footing.
Jobs:
While quota in job selection can be justified to a certain extent, promotions should be
left out of it. Quota in promotions is a rude joke when so many quantified evaluation
models are available to ensure fair assessments during appraisals.
Let us hope that future measures are taken in such a way that benefits really trickle down
to those who need it instead of playing the caste card in every election. Reservation
debate has implications in multiple fields ranging from social justice and economics to
future standards of living. While this short answer is by no means complete in scope, it
should provide pointers to form an informed opinion on this controversial policy of our
country.
Trivia:
Constitution of India guarantees free education for every child till the age of 14. This was
the only directive that Dr. Ambedkar set a timeline to - the deadline for implementing
this was Jan 26, 1960. Today, the average family spends 20% of its income
on primaryeducation. Was this part of the constitution a forgotten promise?
Disclaimer:

I do not accept responsibility for errors in the calculations as this is casual run done
in a single sitting from data which I already have, not a real study (every source and
result is audited by a neutral party in such case) which normally would take a very
long time. Recheck numbers yourself before using it any study or decision making.

Census data inaccuracies:

http://censusindia.gov.in/data_p...
Data source for my calculations:
Demographics:
01 - Census Data of India - http://www.censusindia.gov.in (2010 audit has not
completed yet)
Poverty and timeline statistics:
60 - 11 World Bank data
http://data.worldbank.org/countr...
Caste split:
Sachar Committee report for proportion of Upper Caste poor
http://www.minorityaffairs.gov.i...
Educational spending:
Personal experience. I do not have data for this on a national level as fees in private
schools is unregulated.
Alternate sources for poverty:
Economist http://www.economist.com/node/14...
Center for global developmenthttp://www.cgdev.org/content/pub...

Update:
Sundaravathanan Ekambaram
You are welcome to review my numbers, and refute them from another source if
necessary. They are prepared from census and World Bank data, and quoted for their
respective categories, without mingling data from one source with the other. The charts
are not goggled, they are from GoI sourced from the above links, and prepared by me.
The spreadsheet is below, please do go through it. And the question does ask for my
view. Talk numbers. I have said that reservation so far has not reached those who
deserve it, and that is why we need a income based reservation. I have also said that
many poor Upper castes are left for dead. Is the efficiency you mentioned really worth
the 25% of poor people? I disagree.
Reservation_India
After you go through the numbers, please let me know how a balanced solution can be
arrived at, I am open to better alternatives.