Caste is deep-seated in progressive spaces, including classrooms, hostels and cultural fora. This is unsurprising as academia does not exist in a vacuum; it only reflects the norms prevalent in society. Caste privilege takes on the shape of a debate on ‘merit’, which overlooks the point that merit is not a standalone product, but a byproduct of intergenerational investments in health and nutrition, education, mentoring and a support structure. For certain segments of society, access to such life-changing inputs is still a pipe dream because of caste discrimination that doesn’t vanish when one closes one’s eyes even in institutes of excellence like IITs. Unfortunately, this basic argument is even lost on ‘well-educated’ faculty members of many top-end institutes. Many not only fail to do their basic duties of encouraging and mentoring such students but also routinely discriminate.
Other institutes, irrespective of their size and location, must follow IIT-B’s suit. However, such notifications will have a minimal impact unless and until the world outside the campus walls genuinely eschews social and caste discrimination.
