But there are no managers who will say that. They'll rationalize it a different way that people will buy into.
> I have seen the reservation system in India and it is horrible, to be honest, it only helps the top % people but the bottom of the food chain is exactly where they were since the start, the bottom of the food chain.
I have also, and this is the point of the reservation system, to create wealthy powerhouse families in a society which had very few from those castes. For everyone who complains about it, there are many more who appreciate it for the good it does and who understand that reservations are not meant to eliminate poverty (else they'd be based on financial status) but are meant to build power and concentrated wealth in communities which had no opportunities to have such.
In India, before reservations generational wealth had cemented a very strong hierarchy. Overturning that hierarchy cannot be done solely by providing education equally, there has to be a balance shift somewhere. People are not going to voluntarily give away their inherited wealth and status, so similar wealth and status needs to be built in other communities. The best way to do this is educate some select few in that community, then perhaps they gain wealth from it, now their children get the same education they did, they inherit wealth and build some more, repeat repeat and now you have powerful families in underprivileged communities which could rival the ones in the privileged ones.