It is not the caste based discrimination like you might intuitively perceive. In history there was a caste system that led to systemic deprivation of education

It is not the caste based discrimination like you might intuitively perceive. In history there was a caste system that led to systemic deprivation of education and opportunity to underprivileged castes. So India (few decades back) came up with a reservation system so that people belonging to those castes could get jobs/education/opportunities. In today's times it's scale is more like racism that you would find in most developed nations. However after achieving the basic purpose, the reservation system based on caste was never withdrawn. Lots of political parties invested into those vote banks. Nowadays, the situation is such that many people who get admissions based on the reservation policy are from acceptably well off educated families. There are many people who are relatively poor and financially underprivileged but belong to the upper caste and they cannot get any benefits.