Underrepresentation of Marginalised Groups in India’s Higher Education Institutions: A Critical Analysis

Abstract

The attainment of education is a recognised parameter for social change and social justice. Foregrounding recent data on the status of reservations—for students and teaching faculty alike—in some of India’s prominent Higher Educational Institutions, this article attempts to highlight the inaccessibility of Higher Education for those from marginalised castes.

Keywords

Caste reservation higher education access discrimination exclusion

Introduction

Education is considered one of the major weapons for crossing the socio-economic ladder of any community or social group and achieving mobility, development and empowerment in all fields of human life. Goal 4 of Sustainable Development Goal—states “Education for all,” that is, to ensure equitable, inclusive and quality education along with the promotion of lifelong learning opportunities for all by 2030. Historically, marginalised castes are the most vulnerable social groups in India, and their enrolment in higher education is very low. They are largely underrepresented in universities and colleges in India. A committee constituted by the erstwhile Ministry of Human Resource Development to propose measures towards ensuring the effective execution of reservations in the country’s 23 IITs suggested, in a report submitted to the Government of India on 17-June-2020, that reservations in faculty appointments be done away with. Citing a lack of adequately qualified candidates from marginalised communities, the report—which came into the public domain in December last year—went on to note that “Being established and recognised as institutions of national importance under an Act of Parliament, IITs have ought to be listed under (clause 4) of the CEI (Reservation in Teacher’s Cadre) Act 2019, for exemption from reservations,” in the interest of maintaining “academic excellence” (Rao et al., 2020).

The bogey of “merit” has been used—both morally and legally—as an instrument to justify the privileges in opportunities and socio-economic outcomes for those from forward caste groups and to establish the “naturalisation” of the upper castes as the legitimate inheritors of modernity’ (Deshpande, 2013). Differentiating between the different forms of capital—social, economic and cultural—it is herein that Bourdieu (1986) notes concerning the resultant summatively of cultural capital: “Because the social conditions of its transmission and acquisition are more disguised than those of economic capital, it is predisposed to function as symbolic capital, i.e. to be unrecognised as capital and recognised as legitimate competence.” The history of reservations in India points out how every attempt towards correcting historical injustices has been vehemently opposed by those who swear by the logic of “merit” and “efficiency.” This has been the case right since 1942—when those from SC communities were granted reservations for the first time in central services at 8.5% (Das, 2000). Even post-independence, the Constituent Assembly debated the evidence of how many members of the Assembly were opposed to the provision of reservations for those from marginalised communities (Das, 2000). In response to this opposition, the Indian Constitution constituted measures to safeguard the rights of these people in Articles 16, 46 and 335, among others.

Reservation in Higher Education

The policy of reservations is a system of affirmative action in India that offers representation in education, employment and politics for historically disadvantaged groups, such as Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs). Whereas reservations for SC candidates were instituted on 21-September-1947 at 12.5%, the same was instituted at 5% for ST candidates from 13-September-1950 (Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, 2011). The above was increased to 15% and 7.5%, respectively, for SC and ST candidates on 25-March-1970, based on population figures from the 1961 census (Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, 2011). The implementation of the Mandal Commission recommendations saw a vitriolic anti-reservation public discourse driven by forward-caste students, among others. However, under the judgement of the Supreme Court in the Indira Sawhney case, India saw the introduction of reservations for those from OBC communities at 27%, with the same being defined by the National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) Act enacted in April 1993 (Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, 2011).

In the context of reservation policies in higher education, education equity is addressed in three distinct but interrelated dimensions—access equity, educational experience and outcome equity. Numerous studies that disaggregate the social locations of students across academic disciplines indicate the dominance of forward caste students in “high-status” disciplines, such as engineering, medicine and other professional courses, whereas SCs and STs are concentrated mainly in the more “traditional disciplines” of arts and humanities (Deshpande, 2006; Rao, 2006). That the above results from “durable, self-reproducing mechanisms that are systematic … and systemic” (Deshpande, 2006) as opposed to being the consequence of a disproportionately ordained allocation of “merit” to those from forward caste households may be evidenced by how the great engineers, architects and artisans who built mediaeval India came from the marginalised castes (Arora, 2020). The machinations of the same, wherein one notes the perpetuation of the systemic exclusion and denial of access to the means to a more dignified life that face certain communities, are made evident when one considers India’s Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in their entirety.

Admissions Statistics from IITs, NITs, IIITs, the IISc and Central Universities

A cursory perusal of publicly available data on the category-wise admissions to PhD programmes at the IITs (Ministry of Human Resource Development [MHRD], 2020a) would bear witness to how the above-stated committee’s assertion of there being a lack of adequately qualified candidates from reserved categories is an effort towards obfuscating the extent to which HEIs in general, and the IITs in particular, are already subverting mandated reservation provisions. Between 2015 and 2019, SC students constituted only 9.07% of total students admitted, reaching a high of 9.21% in 2015 and falling to 8.77% in 2017. The situation for SC students was the most alarming at IIT Gandhinagar, where between 2015 and 2019, only 4.54% of the total students admitted were from SC communities. The situation for ST students is even more distressing—only 2.09% of the total PhD candidates admitted every year over the same period came from ST households. In 2018, ST students constituted only 1.84% of all new admits to the PhD programmes at the IITs. The situation for OBC students, although marginally better, is still worrying, with them constituting only 23.23% of all admitted PhD candidates between 2015 and 2019.¹

The situation in other Centrally Financed Technical Institutes (CFTIs) is similarly disconcerting. Whereas a total of 8,068 students were admitted to the PhD programmes offered across the country’s 31 NITs between 2017 and 2020, it is seen that only 10.5% of all admitted students were from SC households. During the above period, students from ST and OBC communities were 3.6% and 24%, respectively. The situation was singularly startling at NIT Nagpur, wherein among the 345 students who were admitted to the institution’s doctoral programme (2017–2020), there was not a single candidate from SC, ST or OBC households who were granted admission. NIT Patna, NIT Kurukshetra and NIT Calicut similarly did not admit a single ST student to their PhD programmes during the same period, despite cumulatively admitting 635 students across categories. Alarmingly, 14 of the 31 NITs are on record as having one or more instances of not admitting a single student from at least one of the reserved categories over the 3 years in question (Ministry of Education, 2021a).

Table 1.

Category-wise Admissions to PhD Programmes in the NITs, 2017–2020.

Year	SC (%)	ST (%)	OBC (%)
2017–2018	10.67	3.426	25.95
2018–2019	10.73	3.13	24.37
2019–2020	9.76	4.61	22.79

Source: Ministry of Education (2021a); The authors.

The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) admitted 1,839 students to its PhD programme between 2016 and 2020. However, only 9.4% and 2.06% of all admitted students came from SC and ST households, respectively. The share of OBC students was 8.26% over the same period, reaching a low of 0.48% in 2017. The figures for admission to the integrated PhD programme offered by IISc over the same duration were 8.88%, 1.16% and 4.63% for SC, ST and OBC students, respectively (Ministry of Education, 2021b). Between 2016 and 2020, all 17 IIITs that had functional PhD programmes as of 4-February-2021 recorded at least one instance of not admitting even a single student from one of the three reserved categories. Of the total students admitted to the same, only 9% and 1.7% were from SC and ST communities, respectively (Ministry of Education, 2021c).

Figure 1.

Source: MHRD (2020a); The authors.

A submission made by the erstwhile Ministry of Human Resource Development before the Parliament on 12-March-2020 went on to detail the extent to which reservations are undermined even in those HEIs that are categorised as Central Universities. Of the 41 Central Universities whose data was submitted, 26 enrolled fewer than 15% SC students, while 23 enrolled, as of 1-April-2019, fewer than 7.5% ST students. 12 Central Universities enrolled fewer than 27% of students from OBC households as of the same date (MHRD, 2020b).

Vacancies in Faculty Positions: The Status in Central Universities

In this regard, the lack of representation among teaching faculty at Central Universities presents a similarly discomfiting picture. As of 1-January-2020, it is seen that there are only 51, 8 and 9 Professors from SC, ST and OBC communities, respectively, teaching in India’s Central Universities (MHRD, 2020d). Apart from the Mahatma Gandhi Central University, Guru Ghasidas Vishwavidyala and the Central University of Kerala, no other such institute employed any professor hailing from an OBC household. Similarly, no other Central University apart from the Guru Ghasidas Vishwavidyala, University of Delhi, Maulana Azad National Urdu University and the University of Hyderabad employed any ST Professor. When compared to the 2,352 Associate Professor positions filled by teachers from forward caste backgrounds, there were only 141, 40 and 31 such positions that were filled by teachers from SC, ST and OBC households (MHRD, 2020d).

Notably, of the 40 Central Universities whose data was made public by the University Grants Commission, all 40 have at least one instance across positions of not employing even a single reserved-category candidate (MHRD, 2020d). In multiple cases (the Central University of South Bihar, University of Delhi, Central University of Jammu, The English and Foreign Languages University, Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University) it is seen that reserved category teaching positions have been converted into ‘General Category’ positions, with the total number of such converted positions as on 1-January-2020 amounting to 64. The quantum of the same was the highest at the University of Delhi, wherein 27 reserved-category Assistant Professor positions were converted into ‘General Category’ positions (MHRD, 2020d).

Table 2.

Category-wise Vacancies in Teaching Positions Across Central Universities as a Proportion of the Total Number of Sanctioned Positions (as of 1-January-2020).

Position	General (%)	SC (%)	ST (%)	OBC (%)
Professor	42.71	82.83	93.98	96.65
Associate Professor	28.77	76.58	86.01	94.3
Assistant Professor	12.92	27.88	33.48	41.83

Source: MHRD (2020d); The authors.

Structural Barriers to Higher Education in India

The above, however, is still an incomplete representation of the institutionalisation of discrimination within the ivory towers that are India’s HEIs. As noted in a recent study, SC and ST households in India earn an annual income 0.8 times and 0.7 times lower than the all-India average annual income, respectively (Bharti, 2018). While forward caste (non-Brahmin) households earn an average annual income of ₹164,633 and Brahmin households earn an annual income of ₹167,013, the average SC household in India earns an annual income of ₹89,356. The average annual income of ST households in this regard is ₹75,216. The study—showing a similar trend concerning asset ownership—details how SC and ST households own, on average, only 0.69 times and 0.56 times the assets owned by an average Brahmin household. The NFHS-4 has similarly gone on to note that while 50.1% of SC households and 70.7% of ST households fall in the two lowest wealth quintiles, the figure for those categorised as “Other” is 24.8% (IIPS, 2017).

That the situation is an inveterate endemic in India has been wholly established by studies that point to caste and kinship networks’ role in enabling one to navigate through systems and institutions that proffer a modicum of social mobility (Gill, 1992). Desai et al. (2010) go on to state in this regard: “teachers” discriminatory behaviour, combined with parental lack of social capital, increases the likelihood that the school experiences of marginalised children are far more negative than those of upper caste children, resulting in lower levels of academic skill acquisition”. When compared to 33% and 42.1% of SC and ST women in the age group 15–49 who had no schooling whatsoever, the figure for women who were categorised as “Other” in the NFHS-4 was 16.6% (IIPS, 2017). The figure, similarly, was 14.5%, 21.9% and 7.4% for SC, ST and “Other” men of the same age group. Whereas only 62.3% and 53% of all SC and ST women were literate, the figure for “Other” women was 79.8%. For men, the figures stood at 82.7%, 75/6% and 90.6% for SC, ST and “Other” men, respectively (IIPS, 2017).

A study analysing data from the 71st Round of the National Sample Survey details how, as opposed to 19.63% of all 15–17-year-old children from forward caste households who either drop out or never enrol in secondary education, the figure for children from SC communities is 33.3% (Madan, 2020). The figure is nearly double for children from ST households, with 37.54% of all ST children either dropping out or never enrolling in secondary education. The institutionalised inaccessibility of higher education for marginalised caste groups is brought into perspective when one notes how the figure of dropouts increases to 70.61% for SC children in the 18–21-year age group as compared to 50.1% for those from forward castes (Madan, 2020). This necessarily has implications in terms of the social locations of students who can even begin to aspire to attain higher education in India.

Privatisation and the Yoke of Inaccessibility

With the Government of India pushing through an agenda of commercialisation in education, it is evident that the above necessitates the entrenchment of the systemic exclusion of marginalised communities from spaces of higher education. In line with the recommendations of committees such as the Birla–Ambani Committee, the withdrawal of the Indian state from education has resulted in a situation wherein higher education in India has become a market-mediated affair largely financed by Indian households, as opposed to being financed by public institutions (Ambani & Birla, 2000; Varghese, 2015). It is thus that we are at a juncture wherein 77.8% of all colleges in India are privately managed, enrolling in turn over 66.4% of all college students in the country (MHRD, 2019). With access to quality education now being determined by one’s capacity to earn, India is now faced with a situation wherein “the public subsidy to students in elite universities, the vast majority from high social families is much higher than mass universities and colleges” (Panigrahi, 2017).

Of particular import concerning technical education in the country is the “Report of the National Fee Committee” constituted by the AICTE (2015) under Justice B. N. Srikrishna’s chairmanship. Accepted in December 2015 by the Government of India, the report went on to detail the maximum “limit” on fees that might be charged by technical institutions (MHRD, 2020c). Although claiming cognisance of the particular impediments faced by students from marginalised communities, the report goes on to state (AICTE, 2015): “The Committee feels that the cost of technical education as worked out may be beyond the means of certain students belonging to SC/ST candidates”.

With access to education and labour market opportunities being mediated by one’s social location (Madheswaran & Attewell, 2007), the purposive denial of reservations to marginalised communities in private educational institutions has serious implications for social justice and the potentiality of education as catalyst for transcendental social change. Equally deleterious in this regard is the objective reality of casteism in private industry—doyens of which repeatedly assert the myth of “castelessness” in the private sector (Confederation of Indian Industries, n.d.). As has been proved by multiple studies, however, the above narrative is a remarkable falsification of India’s everyday reality (Singhara & Madheswaran, 2016; Thorat & Attewell, 2007). It is thus that the Government of India’s National Education Policy 2020 is also to be called out as a dangerous impediment in the way of substantive democracy for its attempt to advocate the furthering of reliance on market institutions and for its willing disregard for students and teachers from marginalised communities (Kerala State Higher Education Council, 2020).

Discrimination: The Case of the All India Institute of Medical Science, Delhi

While students from marginalised castes are undeniably underrepresented in higher education, it is also evident that those who do manage to access such spaces face extant structural and overt discrimination. Furthermore, they are presented with an abject lack of mechanisms for grievance redressal. A study on the status of the implementation of Equal Opportunity Cell guidelines in CFTIs and other HEIs is particularly illustrative. Of the 132 institutes that were surveyed, the websites of only 42 were found to contain any information that could enable one to either access the Equal Opportunity Cell or to even lodge a complaint (Ravishankar et al., 2019).

The Sukhdeo Thorat Committee, formed after multiple instances of discrimination against marginalised students at AIIMS Delhi, detailed patently discriminatory practices in the institution (Thorat et al., 2007).² The Committee went on to note that 72% of SC and ST students reported facing discrimination by faculty members during teaching sessions. Furthermore, 76% of respondents noted that they had been asked to state their caste backgrounds by examiners during practical examinations at the institute, and 84% reported that their grades for the same were affected by their social location. A report of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC, 2008) also highlighted identity-based discrimination, denial of positions to qualified faculty members hailing from marginalised communities, scuttling of constitutionally mandated reservation provisions and the ghettoisation of students from marginalised communities in hostels at the institution.

Multiple judicial rulings, committees and statutory authorities have attempted to address discrimination in higher education spaces. However, most of their recommendations remain only on paper. Despite the Thorat Committee, in the above instance, recommending steps towards the independent and unbiased redressal of grievances of students from marginalised communities, the AIIMS Delhi Administration “initiated a cover-up operation”, instead of “accepting prevalence of rampant caste-based discrimination at AIIMS as documented objectively in the Committee’s report, and initiating measures to prevent such unsavoury and shameless occurrences at the institute” (NCSC, 2008). Citizens from marginalised communities continue to be discriminated against at the institute—a recently reported instance of the same being the denial of a faculty position to a qualified SC candidate, despite him being the only one to be interviewed by the interview panel (Mathew, 2020).

Conclusion

The preceding narrative exemplifies how, rather than abolishing reservations entirely in India’s educational institutions, there is a strong need to increase the enforcement of legally mandated quota measures. Rather than aiming to reduce an already disproportionately low percentage of teaching professors from marginalised caste backgrounds, the Committee would have been better served by recommending ways to remove systemic hurdles to making academia more accessible and inclusive. More special recruitment drives need to be done to encourage and attract candidates from marginalised sections for job opportunities in higher education. There is a need to sensitise the people that affirmative actions like reservation provisions are required to ensure equitable access to resources and opportunities for growth among people of all categories. Such an action must not be linked and misunderstood that those of less merit claim it. It is a tool to uplift those left behind by the general population. Reservation provisions are essential to ensure the representation of each section of society so that the power of decision-making is also divided among them, unlike the current status wherein the decision-making across institutions in contemporary India is overwhelmingly from forward-caste households. Furthermore, the situation presented by neoliberalism necessitates the introduction and rigorous implementation of substantive reservation and anti-discrimination provisions in the private sector and in those publicly-funded institutions that continue to perpetuate the myth of “merit” in public memory.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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