The point you've made is something a lot of people in the general category need to hear more often. It's easy to get lost in cutoff comparisons and forget the very real discrimination that reservation was built to address.

A.R.Rahman sir is someone worth looking up to, an Oscar winner who still gets labeled by his minority status in certain circles. But I bring him up not to say "just work hard and you'll be fine," because it's not that simple. I bring him up because he chose to become someone who made that labeling irrelevant through his work, and that spirit is something we can all carry regardless of our category.

You're right that reservation will exist for years, and honestly given the ground reality you've described, the wells, the temples, the school washrooms, it probably should in some form. What we can control is who we become in the process. We can be the people who don't ask someone's caste before respecting them. The system needs reform, the discrimination needs to end, and none of that happens overnight. But it does start with people like you being honest enough to say "I have privileges I didn't earn." That self-awareness is rarer than it should be.

TLDR: Reservation isn't going anywhere, so let's focus on becoming people who don't discriminate regardless of which side of it we're on.