Robbing Hood: Mandal II

Here we go again.
Or, oops, we did it again. Robin Hood stole from the rich to give to the poor. Our govt is doing something similar. Only, they are not even targeting the rich, but the middle class, who often have only merit to fall back on. Even in this economic stratum, there is a middle class based on intellect/ability---not too brilliant and not below average either. I would call them above average but below brilliant. The brilliant ones will get into IIT’s anyway. The below-brilliant ones are the ones who will be hit the hardest---they are the ones who might otherwise scrape through into the IIT’s and other institutions. Into this segment also fall those whose sheer hard work makes up for lack of brilliance. The extra reservations will take away opportunities from this segment. The rich can always go abroad, or go to private colleges and institutes. The brilliant can win scholarships abroad. The ones who are left high and dry are these---the "somewhere-in-the-middle" class---economics-wise and brains-wise. Who is on their side? Why should anybody bother about them? They are not vote-banks. They are mere taxpayers.
Who is going to take advantage of these reservations? Not the ones who actually need them. They will be people who are BC’s in name only. Their parents (and probably grandparents) would have done well for themselves, having been under the benign reservations umbrella themselves, in their time.
Time and again, it has been suggested, that to give the erstwhile downtrodden classes their proper rights, give them facilities, subsidize their books, meals, tuitions, but don’t bring down the standards by keeping lower qualifying marks or cut-off lines. Just the other day, Delhi Times ran a article on an IIM-A alumnus, who put himself through business school by selling the idlis his mother made. This is the kind of story that inspires. It shows us that it can be done. An earlier generation rhapsodised about people who had come up in life by studying under the light of the street lamp. We point to such people, and say to our children, look he has done it without any of the facilities that I am providing you with. Should not the goverment in its role as mai-baap provide facilities for the genuinely deserving, whatever caste they be? To all intents and purposes the caste system is dead in urban India. Yet, it rears its head in situations like these.
On the one hand we are all smiles and proud of India Shining, because now even a rickshaw-man can own a mobile phone, and on the other we spring this on an unsuspecting middle-class.
Random thought: Should a family sell its flat to finance a child’s studies abroad, so that s/he can get a good job and create enough assets to get another flat? Or should they hang on to the flat since it is an asset which already exists?