'In IIT, most faculty members have a bias against SC/ST students.'
'SC/ST and OBC students have no idea whom to approach for support.'
The suicide of 18-year-old Dalit student Darshan Solanki at the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay once again brings back memories of the Rohit Vemula case which rocked the nation in 2016.
Unlike Vemula, who said he was being discriminated as a Dalit and therefore he was resorting to suicide, Solanki did not leave a suicide note, but his death nevertheless raises more questions than answers.
The Ambedkar Periyar Phule Study Circle at IIT-Bombay tweeted: 'We mourn the loss of an 18- year-old Dalit student, Darshan Solanki, who joined @iitbombay 3 months back for his BTech. We must understand that this is not a personal/individualized issue, but an institutional murder. Despite our complaints the institute did not care to make the space inclusive and safe for Dalit Bahujan Adivasi students.'
In another tweet, the Circle stated: 'The idea of merit is weaponized to harass the students coming to IITs.'
IIT-Bombay denied (external link) the charges of caste discrimination on the campus and said Darshan's death was not an 'institutional murder' as proclaimed by some groups.
Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com spoke to Pranav Jeevan, a member of the Ambedkar Periyar Phule Study Circle at IIT-Bombay, to find out if there is caste discrimination at the IIT as his group claims.
Do Dalit students face discrimination in IITs?
In IIT there is anti-reservation sentiment and historically it is dominated by the upper castes (student and faculty).
It is only in 1973 that the reservation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes started, while the OBC (Other Backward Classes) reservation started from 2008-2009 in IIT. Therefore, the campus of IIT (across India) has traditionally been dominated by upper caste Hindus and it is only now that the change in demography is happening, but that too at the student level.
The problem is in the faculty of IIT as it has not changed yet and continues to be dominated by upper castes.
The diversity reflecting in the students list is not reflecting in the IIT faculty and we have data to prove that in almost every IIT, 95 percent of the faculty is dominated by the upper castes.
Reservation rosters are mandatory in IITs by rule, but they do not hire any reservation rosters in IITs and the government also does not hold them accountable.
IITs hire whomever they like. They usually say they are not getting good candidates from PhD or professor from the reservation category for their faculty.
Is there data to prove this?
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor asked for the data in Parliament and it was found that half the professors seats in the reservation category goes vacant.
The problem comes in the viva round of the interview of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribe professors. The selector can reject a candidate on any grounds by stating that someone is not good enough by deciding his or her fate in five minutes.
It is only now in Jawaharlal Nehru University that we started getting the data for appointing professors. What we found out was that the job applicant from upper castes gets high percentage marks in viva and those from lower castes get less percentage viva. This bias was very evident in JNU appointments.
The trouble in appointing professors for IIT is that the system is very opaque. It is never made public. There is no public listing of marks and each department has its own procedures. There is no fixed framework in appointments of IIT faculty.
Is this an imaginary victimhood mentality of Dalits in IITs or is the discrimination too real to ignore?
IITs have always said they are not getting good enough candidates from lower caste applicants for faculty jobs.
(Of the 1,439 vacancies identified between September 2021 and 2022, only 449 were filled with faculty members from reserved categories, the education ministry told the Lok Sabha [external link]).
We are saying that IITs must be transparent in hiring faculty by giving rank list and filling the vacancies based on reservation category, but these things don't happen in IIT.
If a lower caste student performs badly in IIT it is considered that all lower class students are bad in studies, but if an upper caste student does badly then it is considered as an individual issue. It is not considered as an upper caste community issue.
And see the role reversal. If a lower caste student does well in studies, then h/she is considered to be an exception and his community still gets blamed for not doing good in studies.
A good scoring lower caste students always get this statement, 'You don't look like from your caste.'
This may sound like a compliment, but it is not a compliment to that person. And this is not a one time thing, but a daily routine that lower caste people face.
Do you know of people from the SC or ST community stating that they applied for jobs as IIT faculty, but could not get it?
We collected the data through RTI and found out that IIT-Bombay did not have a single Scheduled Tribe faculty in the last 20 years. In the Scheduled Caste category we found they had only 3-4 faculty members.
After we started the campaign, the government formed a committee to suggest ways on how to get more diversity in IIT and surprisingly, this committee came out with a solution that we need to exempt reservation (external link) for faculty posts in IITs.
IIT then launched Mission Mode to fill up the vacancy of SC/ST and OBC faculty member candidates.
IIT-Bombay alone had 600 vacancies, but for Mission Mode they opened only 77 vacancies. And for this they got 2,200 applicants. All of them were PhD candidates. And many of the IITs did not disclose how many seats were vacant under Mission Mode.
Darshan Solanki's suicide is tragic, but do you think that if IIT-Bombay had more of SC and ST faculty would matters have been different for him?
And, why do you think a student feels alienated among upper caste faculty members?
If you walk into IIT you will find out the surname of faculty and you as a (SC or ST) student will not be able to connect with your faculty.
Caste works in very different ways in our country. And in IIT most of the faculty members have a bias against SC and ST students because they feel they are not as good as other (general category) students.
This faculty feels that because of these students the quality of the campus and the institution has reduced.
In this scenario, SC/ST and OBC students have no idea whom to go to and approach for support.
As it is IIT is a very high pressure environment academically which leads to high suicide rates across all categories. Therefore, all IITs must have counselling support system for students, but for SC/ST and OBC student the caste angle also comes into play.
Mental health issue has to be addressed. We have been telling IIT-Bombay for the last one year that they must have a SC/ST and OBC mental health recruiter who can address their problems.
The current head of IIT-Bombay's head counselor of the Students Wellness Centre had posted a casteist remark on social media (external link) and in this scenario, how do you expect an SC/ST or OBC could go and ask for mental health problem from the same person?
Two weeks back, the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes asked for an explanation from the director of IIT-Bombay as to what action they have taken against the person who posted that casteist remark.
And we have come across cases where SC/ST students, after going to mental health counselling in IIT, have felt worse as their counsellors were not sensitised enough to caste issues. They do not consider caste an issue.
Darshan did not leave a suicide note blaming upper caste students for his suicide. How can you then blame caste discrimination for his death?
I am not saying he died by suicide because of caste discrimination. What we are saying is that his suicide may be due to multiple reasons. It is a combination of many things.
It is like how a person feels depressed because of many things around him and not one single thing. It is like how the environment is treating him.
In IIT the top-most question that students ask each other is, what is your rank?
It is rank that dictates how friendships are formed in IIT.
Rank gives you social status in IIT.
Students decide friendship on the basis of rank.
Now what might happen if a student of lower rank does not speak about the caste discrimination to him, then it affects his mental health for sure.
And on the other hand you have counselors who are openly talking against reservation, then where will the student go for support system in case of mental health breakdown?
We have been raising this issue multiple times for the last one year.
If Darshan had got some support, then probably he may have not died by suicide.
