The phrase “Not found suitable” sounds harmless enough. It carries no overt malice, no visible prejudice, just the dry neutrality of bureaucratic language. In fact, it is precisely the kind of phrase that passes unquestioned. And yet, in university recruitment rooms across India, it may be doing something deeply consequential: quietly keeping certain groups out.
To be clear, this concern is not speculative. Over the past few years, multiple media reports drawing on findings from the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education (2023-24) have pointed to a troubling pattern. Despite meeting eligibility criteria, candidates from Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) communities are increasingly being filtered out under the vague label of “Not found suitable”. At the same time, the committee noted that thousands of reserved faculty positions in central universities remained vacant, with estimates indicating that over 60 percent of SC and more than 80 percent of ST professor-level posts unfilled. Seen together, these are not isolated gaps; they point to a structural problem.
If one looks more closely at faculty composition, the imbalance becomes even harder to ignore. Data from the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2021-22 and submissions to the University Grants Commission show that central universities continue to be overwhelmingly dominated by general category candidates. SC and ST representation, especially at senior levels, remains in the low single-digit shares, far below the constitutionally mandated 15 percent and 7.5 percent.
The trend is not confined to one segment of higher education. In elite institutions such as the IITs, representation of SC and ST faculty is consistently reported to be extremely low, as highlighted in parliamentary discussions and RTI-based reports during 2022-24. Even at the entry level, where reservation policies are expected to work most effectively, representation improves only modestly before thinning out sharply as one moves up the hierarchy.
What explains this persistent gap? At first glance, universities tend to attribute it to a shortage of “suitable candidates”. But this is precisely where the issue becomes more complex. Because what we are dealing with here is not simply a question of availability, but of how “suitability” itself is defined and applied.
In the past, caste discrimination in education was often blunt and visible: denial of access, segregation, or outright exclusion. Today, it is embedded in processes that appear neutral: shortlisting, interviews and selection criteria framed in terms like “merit,” “fitness” and “suitability”. The problem is not that these criteria exist, but that they are rarely transparent or standardised. As the Parliamentary Standing Committee noted, the repeated use of suitability labels risks functioning as a structural barrier, allowing institutions to bypass reservation norms without formally violating them.
This is why the issue cannot be dismissed as an administrative anomaly. Because it reflects something deeper about how institutional systems work. In a society already shaped by entrenched inequalities, discretion is seldom neutral. When criteria remain undefined, and decisions are not subject to scrutiny, the system creates room for exclusion—quietly, consistently and without accountability.
Universities often defend themselves by citing due process and academic criteria. But this misses the point. Discrimination today does not occur despite procedure; it operates through it. The system is not being broken; it is being used to reproduce existing hierarchies.
This concern becomes sharper when placed within the broader climate of higher education. UGC data indicates that complaints of caste-based discrimination in higher education have risen significantly in recent years, from 173 cases in 2019-20 to 378 in 2023-24. This rise may partly reflect greater awareness and reporting, but it also signals that the problem is far from resolved.
There is also a cultural dimension that cannot be ignored. When caste-insensitive remarks surface in institutions, they do more than offend. They normalise indifference and trivialise caste concerns. Discrimination does not always require intent; it often thrives in such environments.
What, then, is at stake? Not just about jobs or representation. Universities are spaces where knowledge is created and legitimised. Who occupies them shapes what is studied, whose voices matter, and what counts as knowledge. Exclusion, therefore, has consequences beyond access. This brings us to responsibility. If universities are to matter in a democracy, they must rest on fairness, transparency and accountability. Recruitment processes should be transparent, with clearly defined criteria for suitability. Decisions declaring candidates “Not found suitable” must be recorded, justified and open to independent review.
The question, therefore, is not whether caste discrimination exists. There is ample evidence it does. The real issue is whether we recognise its changing forms. “Not found suitable” may sound administrative, but in context it becomes something else: not a neutral judgement of merit, but a quiet tool of exclusion that allows inequality to persist under the guise of fairness.
John J Kennedy | Former Professor and Dean, Christ (Deemed) University, Bengaluru
(Views are personal)