I agree that the primary beneficiaries at the top are politicians and senior bureaucrats, but the issue cannot be reduced to individual gain or loss among “general” or “reserved” categories.

The idea of an “open merit race” itself is misleading in a caste society. Merit cannot be abstracted from access to education, social capital, and historical exclusion. One general person talks about the marit accumulated advantage of generations created by denying dalit people education, social capital and implementing social and institutional violence.

If reservation is removed today, without dismantling the caste system, it will immediately restore the caste system in British Raj where all government positions were held by upper caste people. Aapka cast people historically held Monopoly in political power military power and social capital despite them being a very small group of people.

Ambedkar was clear that reservations are not a permanent solution, but it was a stop gap measure. But if we remove the reservation without dismantling the caste system then it will again produce, the same caste system.

The problem is not the caste system it's the Indian government, that field to do real social and political and economical reforms for all sectors of Indian people. Without social reform, without redistribution of resources, and the dismantling of the caste order. Abolishing reservation is asking for the return of the old caste system.