Reservations – to be or not to be?

Reservations – to be or not to be?

Looking at the current fiasco over reservations in educational institutes and pvt. Organizations of up to 50% require an analysis to get its impact on society for a long term.
Taking a glance on the socio political scenario, we see that the major reason why the UPA government is bringing this legislation, is to create a good vote bank among the backward class, whose vote presently goes to regional players.
Obviously the poor needs access to better quality of education, but there are two questions, First, does poor mean OBC/ST/SC, and, Second, are reservations the cure?
I myself have seen many poor Brahmins and very rich people who belong to so called backward class or caste. Also, if reservation is the cure, why not reservations for poor (who need if at all there is a need)? Why give benefits to numerous rich people? Giving reservation on caste basis is clearly playing a dirty case politics for getting a vote bank. Let us see in a different way. It will be false to say that a person is denied admission because he belongs to a backward class, He is denied if he does not have enough merit. Now, you can say that a poor person does not have enough facilities, tutoring etc. so that he can show his full capability among those who have such privileges, SO the point is that he was indirectly denied admission not because he belonged to a backward class, but because he was ECONAMICALLY POOR. If a person has enough money (and I am sure thousands of them do have), he can enjoy all privileges for his studies, so why give him a reservation and take out a more meritious fellow? Also, a upper class economically poor (I know that there are thousands of such people), has no options other than live in poverty if there are reservations for OBC. Hence if at all reservation is the cure, it should be ONLY and ONLY on basis of economic condition, and NOT at all on castesim, which should be removed. I am sorry ERADICATED.
Either the present day politicians (with many graduates, postgraduates and PhD’s) are dumb to understand this simple thing, or they want to kill this country for there selfish political needs.
Now comes the big question. Is reservation the cure?
If we hear pro reservation activists, the tell that it is not fair that a person living in a village, whose parents are illiterate, has no tuitions (and hence no one to clear his doubt and look after his academic progress) competes with a person who has all the benefits of staying in a city, access to all good schools, tuitions and a better environment to study. Looks quite convincing. Let us see further. Let us say, we implement reservations (at least not for ST/SC/OBC, say for economically poor). And that too 50% as the number of poor people is more than 75% in India. So economically poor students, who could not study properly for more than 12-14 years due to lack of good schools and etc. get a chance to get in the most premier colleges, and some richer students, who were more capable to get in these institutes as, they had the resources with them (also very very importantly were worthy and hard working) are denied admission (because they could study nicely??). So, a person whose basics are extremely weak suddenly faces a top class competition. What happens is he is unable to compete with those who studied (say could study if you like to say so) in a much better way (remember that is why we are giving reservation to one who could not), and hence has more chances to lag behind. If we rely on reservations, these people whom we are trying to help, most of the time lag behind (no doubt some of them will go much ahead but as they have taken lesser quality of education for 15-16 years of there life, how can just a 3-4 year of high quality education change everything?), and some meritious people are denied the chances of getting in a premier institute.
What if had tried a different approach. Make robust education systems in rural areas. Open schools of high standards (why not take support from private institutes?). Put in good teachers, labs infrastructure. How to do this? There has to be an innovative approach to make it lucrative for good teachers. And believe me, if private sector is bought in this with a healthy completion there can be a BIG change in the education system. Now we have a different scenario. Everyone is having good education access. Many economically poor get to primer institutes (they are no where less in merit). There standard of education becomes higher and as a result of which there socio economic status rises, hence the evil is cured.
I am more comfortable with the second scenario, wherein I see high quality education for deprived, and for all not only for the one who had reached a level to go for higher education, and no meritious students denied his RIGHT.
What is your take? Reservations – to be or not to be?