> Go to any govt office: the chief of some division is incompetent, some low-level clerk does the heavy lifting.
For the majority of the time since 1947, it was the non-reserved "competent" class of people who were in charge of government institutions. Even today, I can easily walk into a government office and find some "competent" class officer whose only interest is in milking as much money as he can out of the citizenry. So what gives?
Corruption is NOT confined to one class, one caste, one set (random vs. non-random), one alumni association, one group (competent vs. incompetent). This issue is orthogonal to competence: one can be corrupt irrespective of competence.
People recruited in state services (just like UPSC) are promoted to IAS/IPS. When these promoted IAS/IPS officers want postings as district magistrates (collectors) or superintendents of police for districts, the chief secretary or the DGP want bribes; otherwise, they are posted in loop-line (like special project director for land acquisition or railways SP). Add this to sycophancy in India: this sycophancy is there since Islam Rule, then continued into British Raj, now post-Independence India. Every subordinate officer, while treating his/her subordinates as trash, salutes his/her superior. Sycophancy and corruption are deeply related, and collusion between bureaucracy and politicians adds flavor to this mix.
My point is why the enormous amount of energy directed at reservations when there are mountains of evidence that corruption is several orders of magnitude more destructive? It's an elephant vs an ant in the room thing. You ignore the elephant and think the ant is causing systemic malaise. Why is that?
Is it because Hindu dharma dictates that certain classes are meant to do certain jobs? Like a person availing reservation is born stupid - because of bad karma from a past life - and so can never learn how to do administrative work competently?
Both incompetence and corruption need to be fixed. Incompetence from the rationality perspective [1], corruption from the systems perspective. Just because some book says "people from X varna should do certain job", who is enforcing it? Now you can say that Brahmins haven't taught Vedas to non-brahmins. Come on, who wants to recite Vedas today? History showed us that many Sudra kings ruled; what does it show? That one's favorite text is not binding; or, no one is enforcing what the text says; or, human actions are not instantiations of beliefs, which are textual; etc.
> Just because some book says "people from X varna should do certain job", who is enforcing it?
Hindu dharma is not driven by any particular book, but is simply the dominant sociopolitical system in the Indian sub-continent. A political system with a tiny elite controlling the rest is inherently unstable (think monarchies or communism) whereas a political system which distributes its elites tends to be stable. That is what the caste system is. Each jati had its own ruling body and social structure. And then there were broader rules which governed how jatis interact, which is where the varnas come in.
Now how do you maintain this political system if people are free to leave a jati or intermarry with another jati willy-nilly? You can't. That is why caste endogamy is so strictly enforced (and often violently) in the sub-continent. And the endogamy dates back to like from 2000 years ago. This socio-political system is so fundamental a building block of the sub-contient that even Muslims and Christians follow it unlike in other parts of the world.
The other problem to solve in this jati system is that how do you keep some jati doing the dirty or undesirable jobs? This is where the concept of karma comes in. Some people can get away with murder because that's just how the universe works. They will get their just desserts in the next life.
Given all that, people who grow up in such a culture carry some biases pretty strongly. Like if a guy gets into medical college due to reservation, but earns the degree like everyone else in his class - by you know completing all the course requirements - he is still not qualified to treat people. The bad karma sticks around. That is how the enforcement works. The cultural beliefs do it.
No one has described the so-called sociopolitical system and its dynamic (how it reproduces). What we have speculative accounts, ad hoc in nature. Let's look at endogamy.
"A caste is an endogamous group, or collection of endogamous groups, bearing a common name, membership of which is hereditary, arising from birth alone; imposing on its members certain restrictions in the matter of social intercourse; either (i) following a common traditional occupation, or (ii) claiming a common origin, or (iii) both following such occupation and claiming such origin; and generally regarded as forming a single homogenous community" (p.5 of Blunt's The caste system of Northern India)
"The endogamy of a subcaste is not as rigid as that of a caste. A marriage between (say) a Brahman bridegroom and a Rajput bride is unthinkable, but intermarriages have occurred between subcastes of the same caste with no worse consequences than a purificatory sacrifice; and if circumstances make it desirable, such as lack of women, subcaste endogamy is abandoned. Even in the Brahman caste this has occurred. Subcaste endogamy is muta- ble; sometimes a subcaste which is endogamous in one place is not so in another. A trifling quarrel will drive two groups that formerly intermarried to endogamy: the removal of the cause of offense removes the restriction. But the most potent of all objections is the fact that endogamous subcastes are not regarded by their own members or by the rest of Hindu society as castes. To call such groups castes is to treat them as being what no Hindu would admit them to be. An investigator is not at liberty to manipulate his material so as to make it fit his theories." ( ibid, 6-7)
From a field study from Karnataka:
"[O]ut of the 600 Panchayat members, majority of them did not endorse strict endogamy, commensality, untouchability. Nonetheless these respondents, did express their willingness to continue their jati tradition. This makes sense only when they think that these are not constituent properties of the jati traditions. Otherwise how can they disagree with the so called constituent properties of the jati and yet are willing to continue with their affiliation to their jati. This either indicates that none of the so-called characteristic features of the caste system are valid for these jatis or that the jati structure can include or exclude anything and still survive.
Those who consider the jatis as the referential points of the term caste, hold endogamy to be the most fundamental to the caste difference. However the Swamis of some of these jatis advocate for inter jati marriages for various reasons, like for survival of the jati against shortage of brides, or to unite different jatis belonging to the same cluster like Lingayat, Brahmana.. Though they have their own preferences of jatis to be accepted for inter marriage, this at least indicates that endogamy is not a constituent property of the jati units The Havyak Brahmins preferred inter-jati marriage as a means of saving their jati from the crisis of brides. In the case of Lingayat swamis, inter-jati marriage is viewed as a way to unite the Lingayats."
The real biggest problem is: what is a caste? For instance, in the states of Andhra Pradesh/Telangana, after the internet revolution, I have seen people talking about "reddy society". When I asked these society members, what makes some Subba Reddy from a village A, Kurnool District, another Ram Reddy from a village B, Nalgonda District, as belong to the reddy-caste? Their simple answer: because we are all reddy-s, we have that 'reddy' tag in our names. This is a circular explanation. If one goes back 40 years ago, we heard different kinds of reddy-s: pakanati, pedakanti, neravadi, panta, etc. People from each of these (pakanati, pedakanti, ...) didn't marry from other groups. Is there a super-caste called 'reddy', whose sub-castes are pakanati, pedakanti, neravadi, panta, etc? Or pakanati, pedakanti, neravadi, panta, etc are different castes? No answer.
In fact, the name 'pakanati' is related to a geographical area called 'paaka-naadu'. Even some other 'sub'-castes (not reddy-s) have paaka-naadu in their group. The whole debate is mired in this. British tried to classify and gave up on this project.
Let me cite another way of describing this:
'While emphasizing that I do not attack and much less defend the caste system in what follows, let us look at the existing descriptions and their consequences.
(a) Caste is an antiquated social system that arose in the dim past of India. If this is true, it has survived many challenges – the onslaught of Buddhism and the Bhakti movements, the Islamic and British colonization, Indian independence, world capitalism – and might even survive ‘globalization’. It follows, then, that the caste system is a very stable social organization.
(b) There exists no centralized authority to enforce the caste system across the length and breadth of India. In that case, it is an autonomous and decentralized organization.
(c) All kinds of social and political regulations, whether by the British or by the Indians, have not been able to eradicate this system. If true, it means that the caste system is a self-reproducing social structure.
(d) Caste system exists among the Hindus, the Sikhs, the Jains, the Christians, the Muslims… It has also existed under different environments. This means that this system adapts itself to the environments it finds itself in.
(e) Because new castes have come and gone over the centuries, this system must also be dynamic.
(f) Since caste system is present in different political organizations and survives under different political regimes, it is also neutral with respect to political ideologies.
Even though more can be said, this is enough for us. A simple redescription of what we think we know about the caste system tells us that it is an autonomous, decentralized, stable, adaptive, dynamic, self-reproducing social organization. It is also neutral with respect to political, religious and economic doctrines and environments. If indeed such a system ever existed, would it also not have been the most ideal form of social organization one could ever think of?
How can we try to understand this odd state of affairs? The question of the immorality of the caste system became immensely important after the British came to India. Consequently, there are two interesting possibilities to choose from: one, Indians did not criticize the caste system (before the British came to India) because Indians are immoral; two, the Europeans ‘discovered’ something that simply does not exist in India, viz. the social organization that the caste system is supposed to be.
The reason why I have spent time on this issue is to signal in the direction of a problem, which has very far-reaching consequences. If what Europe knows about India resembles what it claims to know about the caste system, what exactly does Europe know about India or her culture? Not very much, I am afraid.'[1]
Up until a decade or two ago, rhetoric was an extremely effective tool when it came to denying the origins of caste. But with genetic evidence piling up, such positions are simply untenable[1]. As to why certain social institutions endure for so long, it's for the same reason why monarchies had endured even longer than caste endogamy has.
Endogamy fails when the ratio of males to females in a group is not 1:1, a simple mathematical fact. Many castes have disappeared, many emerged. Genetical evidence just show that people prefer to marry within that particular sub-caste, but it is not a constituent property of caste--let alone a system of castes. If we apply this logic (endogamy meausurement), castes existed in other continents, countries far away from India. In that case, we see a phenomenon not unique to India.
BTW, I am not denying that practices exist, practices are continued, even modified. Nor am I denying that jaatis-exist. I am not even denying that there are fights between different jaatis at different places. There is a difference between phenomena and explanations(descriptions). Over the time, theory-laden descriptions of phenomena start replacing the very phenomena. That facts are theory-laden or that facts are facts of a theory--is not some rhetoric.
Once caste-system (sociopolitical system, as you put), a theoretical entity, is postulated to explain various phenomena, now all these phenomena are re-described using this language. When I deny these re-descriptions, you seem to think that I am denying phenomena (for example, people prefer intra-jaati marriages), as you call this denial of re-descriptions as rhetoric.
Practices exist, jaatis exist, various phenomena exist, does the caste-system exist?
For the majority of the time since 1947, it was the non-reserved "competent" class of people who were in charge of government institutions. Even today, I can easily walk into a government office and find some "competent" class officer whose only interest is in milking as much money as he can out of the citizenry. So what gives?