UGC to crack whip on bias towards Dalits
October 9, 2011 – 6:28 am By Ayyappa Prasad
New Delhi/Chennai, Oct 8 (TruthDive): "It has come to the notice of
the UGC that, suicides (are) being committed by Dalit students in
higher education institutes due to caste discrimination on grounds of
their social origin. Officials and faculty members should desist from
any act of discrimination against Dalit students," UGC Joint Secretary
K C Pathak has said in a communication to Registrars of 578
universities and deemed universities across the country.
Pathak said "if any such incident comes to the notice of the
authorities, action should be taken against the erring
official/faculty members promptly." Acting on the UGC directive that a
complaint register be maintained Anna University of Technology (AUT
Chennai) has instructed principals of all its affiliated engineering
colleges to ensure that caste-based discrimination did not take place
in their institutions and registers be kept.
IIT Madras has parted with only a fraction of the 22.5 percent quota
for students belonging to the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and the Scheduled
Tribes (STs). According to information provided by the institute's
deputy registrar, Dr K. Panchalan, in September 2005, Dalits accounted
for only 11.9 percent of the number of students. They were even fewer
in the higher courses — 2.3 percent in MS (Research) and 5.8 percent
in Ph.D. Out of a total of 4,687 students, Dalits made up only 559.
The majority of the 460 faculty members and students here are
Brahmins.
In the past four years, 18 Dalit students have committed suicide in 16
institutes of higher education, including the IITs, Indian Institute
of Science and AIIMS.
Born in a village in Tamilnadu, VP Gomathi is Masters in Social Work
(2009) from one of the most reputed institutes of the country and
striving towards her dream of playing an important role in the
empowerment of our community. Her journey from a small village, to
Madurai and then to Mumbai is a saga of her hard work, determination
and tremendous self belief, reports the portal scststudents.org. Her
entire experience as a student is given in an interview and also a
hope that everything is not lost; excerpts:
Having come from certain background, for a long time I used to feel
inferior. Most of our students come from such a background and feel
the same. We start getting this feeling that we can't do, we can't
achieve, and we can't excel in our lives. But we need to fight such
feelings, we have to become strong and not become victim of the
system. I will tell you that even up to college days, I used to hear
that, 'my father is a doctor or so and so but your's is a labourer,
you will never go up'. Once I did reply that, "Yes, your father is a
doctor and mine is a labourer, still we are sitting on the same bench,
in the same class. Now tell me who is more meritorious?
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