Vinay,

You have made a premise based on the following: That a reserved category person earns Rs. 50,000 and a general category person earns Rs. 5000. And that too you have stated just one person per side - when reality is a lot more complex than this.

The premise itself is flawed. Agreed there are many people belonging to reserved classes that earn more than some people belonging to the open category - the exact opposite is also true. The point here is not of upliftment of these people - but of people in the same reserved class who are not well-off. That rich people from reserved classes also get the benefit is a fall-out of the system (if this can be corrected or not is another question - and should not be used to black-wash the concept of reservation).

Do you think screening people for income instead of caste for eligibility will work? If the rich guys hijack caste-based reservation they can do the same for income based reservation - and income based reservation will be far more prone to misuse in terms of scale: Where caste-based reservation unfairly benefits well-to-do people of reserved classes (i.e., it is limited to few out of many), income based reservation will unfairly benefit almost anyone and everyone who has the resources to fakely show low income!! Checking genuinness will be even more difficult in this case.