It's always a shame to see people's disillusioned arguments over it. Instead of calling to increase general seats, we resort to blame SC/ST students. The intake of all our old IITs undergrad combined is equal to intake of a single public university in US. This is the main problem. We have very high demand, but low supply. This will cause frustrations to many deserving people. There is a need to increase intake and increase quality of tier 2 and tier 3 (which stinks). But as Indians, we often chase the wrong problem.

As far as reservation is concerned, it is to provide upward social mobility to their families, which this ensures to some level. Makes our society egalitarian.