And we all know that the way to treat people with respect is to deal with them as if they were handicapped.
If they're not, then why does it matter?
If they are, then is it a) a tragedy that should be remedied by providing better nutrition, education, opportunities, or b) are they a lower level of sub-human who we just have to put up with in menial roles?
I'll note that if you do a) then the problem of them getting in on lower grades solves itself, as they compete for the limited slots available to them. And at that point you can remove the system entirely.
Are there less people in the "lower" caste? I would assume there would be more and severe competition.
The remainder bulk of the people who don't get reservations fall into this category called 'General Merit'.
Now the system fills up the reservation quotas first, leaving leftovers to general merit. General merit has way more candidates and a larger section of people who score above reservation people. The net result is you end up denying top performers seats, so that you can fill reservation quotas.
You're taking this the wrong way. It's not that they think that people who came in through reservations are inferior. It's that they don't have to work nearly as hard.
In an exam where an upper caste person might have to score 100 to get in, the reserved caste person would have to score 70.
It's about the unfairness of this system.
Which is strange because the caste system before this was wildly unfair itself.
To mitigate the damage of one unfair system, we've set up another one.