There’s a child, born to parents who have been poor for generations, not allowed to educate themselves or their children, ostracised from main society for centuries. There’s another child, born to some parents, but left with none, thrown in a dumpster, or left in a park, to die or to survive on its own, no idea where to get food from, or even how to get food, nowhere to go, and no one to love him/her.
It would be natural to think that both these children deserve sympathy and affirmative action in some form, if only from the voice of conscience that resides deep within us. That conscience speaks to the Government to take care of the destinies of these siblings in distress.
However, throughout its long existence, the Planning Commission did not think so.
As a result, in the above example, the first child gets benefitted under government schemes to go to school and college, coaching, hostels, reservation, loans and even sponsorship for studies abroad.
The second child? Well, if he/she is lucky enough to be in the 0.5% of all orphans that get to, through a rare concatenation of events, reach an orphanage, then the child has access to some food, limited education (only till age 14) and then at age 18, is shunted out to brave the streets again!