FC,BC,MBC,OBC,SC,ST - it is funny to observe that our identity is finally reduced to a mere two or three letters. Courage, Intelligence, Hard Work,Bravery, Goodness, Skill, Excellence, Merit and all virtues can go to hell. It is painful to see fourth and fifth graders discussing about which categories they fall under to weigh their opportunities to life. India is the only country in the whole world where people fight to be backward ! All this in a so called secular and democratic country where every man should be treated equally. How would a 7 year old respect a country and its policies if you say India is a secular country in the history/civics classes and implement reservation right from admissions to LKG till retirement benefits. Why are we driving more and more of qualified people to the developed nations ? Why are we fighting to be a country of mediocres ?  Some analysis on the caste system which is the basis of all reservation.

To start with, why was the caste system created and what was the basis for the categorization ?

"A caste system is one in which a caste's community occupations, traditions, social & multicultural heritage are maintained and respected, in a given society"

The fundamental idea of creating a caste many many years ago was to form homogeneous groups primarily based on occupation.

Let me give an example to make things clearer: Naidu is one of the popular castes in the southern states; population under this caste is estimated to be around 60 to 70 million. There are many subcastes under Naidu which range from FCs to OBCs to SCs.

Source of Naidu: Medieval Andhra dynasties like the Vishnukundins and Chalukyas conferred the title Nayaka/Nayakudu to a commander or a leader of a band of soldiers/village or lineage headman/ warriors/ army commanders etc - fundamentally all titles leading to the job description of a team leader or project leader of what we call them in the corporate world. So basically all Naidus - Balija, Boyar caste, Gavara, Kalingi, Kamma, Kapu, Mudiraju, Reddy, Telaga, Uppiliya and Velama.(TN,AP,Karnataka and Kerala), Naiks(Maharashtra,Orissa and northern states), Nayakars(TN),Nairs (Kerala),Naiko, Naickers - all of these castes stemmed out from one homogenous source - the "team or project leader" !! How many of these castes continue to do their TL/PL functions in their current lives?? Will the categories which were created centuries ago still apply?? No Nah Nope. We boast of being rational at every instance, see how foolish we are! Trying to follow some code which is no longer useful or valid, it is like using the punched card technology in the wifi world!

I bet all these caste fanatics will not even know the history/background of their caste without reading the Wikipedia!

Each category finally rolls up to the core of the profession which forms the crux of the caste. What started as 4 many centuries ago has become 400,000 now not because of reason but due to pure convenience and vote bank politics based on differentiation.

What’s the solution ? Mathematically the reverse of differentiation is integration. Since we know that the fundamental idea of all Nairs, Naidus, Nayakars is the same, the first step can be to integrate all the sub castes and castes with description matching to "TL/PL" to one and giving it some name. Let us say "Nair Naidukkar", we can add more letters to satisfy all the constituent castes. If this is made mandatory by the government and even if everyone becomes BC or OBC in "Nair Naidukkar", we will still be successful since some 40 sub categories would have been erased from the records.Junta will have no other option but to integrate if the Government mandates that all these subcastes will be invalid with a deadline.

Future phases would be to slowly integrate sub castes with homogeneous factors and there would be some day when there are 5 to 6 major categories only. And these 5 to 6 would be mostly based on FC,BC,OBC,SC and ST. What an achievement - there will be no caste system! Just reserved categories and that is good because it would be a stepping stone for unity at least at a larger scale. Add economics, income levels to these categories, even reservation can be removed from the system eventually.