The Constitution of India considers the practice of untouchability a criminal offence. Laws such as the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955 and the SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 were enacted not only to punish those practising untouchability, but to also deter those abetting it.
As the socio-economic environment evolved, such practice underwent many changes. Today, it’s indirect and systemic in urban areas. Some scholars have identified more than 60 ways of practising untouchability—from segregating individuals over food choices to discriminating subtly in educational institutions and workplaces. In rural India, a combination of overt and subtle discrimination persists, where the person perpetrating it and the one facing it understand the thin line separating the two, but cannot prove its working.
Instances of discrimination are far more apparent in government offices and public educational institutions. This essentially has to do with the ownership of resources. Most cases reported are associated with economic spaces. Therefore, the social construct is essentially determined by the economic engagements between communities.
Systemic discrimination and the practice of exclusion in educational institutions operate in a manifest manner—right from the admission process at the undergraduate level. Most colleges accredited by ‘B’ rating and onwards can easily fill the full reservation quota, considering that the cutoffs need not be very high. But entry into the best colleges complicates things owing to students with private schooling and coaching bringing the cutoff up or securing seats early.
Employability after postgraduate courses has given way to the preference for private universities that are inaccessible to students from the margins. Doctoral programmes with diminishing scholarships have begun to keep them out, leading to teaching opportunities in public institutions becoming inaccessible. Among those already in service, caste-based exclusion remains extremely evident. When B R Ambedkar called for annihilation of caste, education was supposed to be the key in facilitating it.
The debate around the unfortunate death by suicide of Sahil Wakode at IIT Bombay has again raised concerns about the treatment of socially-disadvantaged communities. The claims by IIT-B and allegations made by the parents and organisations supporting them bring to the fore the worst case of structural discrimination.
The ascriptive society that India inherits is mostly based on exclusion in education. Individuals belonging to the lowest strata at one point were brutally penalised for acquiring education, it being an important medium of social mobility. However, a new stratification in education seems to have been generated. One can understand it in terms of the courses that members of SC and ST communities opt for.
The question of merit is a farce in a system based to a large extent on caste ascription. The fact that students like Sahil make it to an institution of excellence like IIT-B is itself evidence that there is no dearth of talent, because unlike unreserved category students, he cracked the same exam with almost equal grades. Therefore, the argument of privileging someone coming from a disadvantaged community does not stand.
One must consider that the seats reserved for SC groups are far less than the seats for other communities. Fortunately, today, a few students having better educational backgrounds are able to make it to the merit list of top institutions because expenditure on education among SC families remains high on average. Their aspiration, however, can be satisfied only at public institutions.
After Sahil’s suicide, the debate over reserved-unreserved seems ‘manufactured’. The case has occurred at a premier institution precisely because the government funds it to keep up standards. Therefore, the aspiration to succeed here is not just among those coming from disadvantaged backgrounds, but also those from the general category.
Sahil’s case is certainly a major concern to the entire students’ community, as oppressive institutional engagements claim many lives. As statistics is brought to the table to argue that students are not able to cope up with the pressures irrespective of caste, or that more students from the general category have committed suicides, have to be looked at in a very rational manner.
One aspect missing in the debate is institutional reforms. The Karnataka government’s Rohith Vemula Bill can offer some options. It is also important to know about the functioning of SC-ST committees, equal opportunities cells and inclusivity among the chairs of such committees. Socially-active individuals with known credibility must have seats on such panels.
Enough students from marginalised communities have lost their lives across higher education institutions. Reforms, therefore, are essential to stop structural or systemic discrimination on the lines of the 1989 Act. If the brutal Nirbhaya case could prompt new laws, why can’t Sahil's case, too?
It is important that institutions of higher learning are treated as spaces for free thinking and equal opportunities, where traditionally disadvantaged communities feel welcomed and secure.
Mrudul Nile | Professor, Department of Civics and Politics, University of Mumbai
(Views are personal)