The appeal of institutionalized reservation in India is attributable, in the first place, to the worsening of economic, mental, emotional, physical, social, cultural and political conditions that have thrown wide layers of the population off balance, deeply alienating them for centuries, to the benefit of very few(Brahmins). Majority of disoriented middle caste and dalits have slowly evolved an opposition to the status quo that rejects norms of equal representation for all groups(advantaged and disadvantaged) and embraces what it conceives to be "caste" means, i.e., devolution of basic Universal Human Rights for majority in a society.
Reservation finds its ideological sources in the filth thrown up by Decaying "upper caste" society: racism, the cult of untouchability and suppression.
