If IITs Had More Dalit Professors, Would Aniket Ambhore Be Alive?

Aniket Ambhore, 22, a Dalit student at IIT Bombay fell to his death from the 6th floor of the hostel in 2014.

(Photo Courtesy: Facebook/@Aniket Ambhore)

In March 2012, Sanjay and Sunita Ambhore received a letter from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B), informing them that their son Aniket, a first year-student of electrical engineering at the institute, had failed two courses.

Concerned, the Ambhores – Sanjay, a bank manager and a Dalit from Maharashtra’s Akola district and Sunita, a junior-college lecturer – met one of Aniket’s professors.

The professor told the Ambhores that Aniket, 19, who was admitted on a Scheduled Caste (SC) quota, could not cope with the IIT workload and would be happier in a “normal” engineering college (with lower standards).

The couple said the professor implied that Scheduled Caste students took up to eight years to complete a course that normally took four years. The professor suggested counselling to help Aniket focus on studies and named anti-depressants he could take.

The comments came as a shock to Sanjay and Sunita, who admitted that they were, until then, mostly unaware that such attitudes existed in higher-education institutions.

Some high-caste professors consider Dalit students “uneducable”, wrote educationist Kurmana Simha Chalam in an 2007 book, Challenges of Higher Education.

“Aniket did not find anything wrong with what he (the professor) had said, maybe because of the way it was said, as a well-meant suggestion,” Sunita Ambhore told IndiaSpend.

Like Aniket, Dalit students who are subjected to such casteist outbursts often end up feeling like they are undeserving of their admission to higher-education institutions, concluded this 2013 King’s College London study of an Indian university, now a book, Faces of Discrimination in Higher Education in India: Quota Policy, Social Justice and the Dalits.

Aniket – who scored 93 percent in his class 10 CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) board exam and 86 percent in his class 12 Maharashtra state board exam – possibly influenced by disparaging talk of affirmative action, told his parents that he wanted to reappear for the Joint Entrance Examination, the IIT admission test, which he cleared in 2011. He told them that he wanted to study engineering at an IIT only if he could crack the test.

Between then and August 2014, the Ambhores consulted three psychiatrists to help their son regain confidence. It made no difference.

Gradually, the talented Aniket (click here to hear him singing at an IIT Bombay festival) turned into a student with low self esteem.

In August 2014, a joint meeting with Aniket’s head of department and the head of the Academic Rehabilitation Programme (ARP) – a programme for academically deficient students that Aniket had been enrolled in the previous year headed by the same professor they met in 2012 – went particularly badly.

The ARP head suggested that another exam failure would devastate Aniket, so it would be best if he dropped out, joined an NGO and considered a career as a teacher.

On 4 September 2014, Aniket fell to his death from the sixth floor of an IIT-B hostel. Police have not been able to ascertain whether his death was an accident or if it was a case of suicide. 

Some Bias Shows up on Campus: IIT Bombay Director

Media reporting of Aniket’s death – such as this 6 September 2014, report in the Times of India – suggested he struggled with academics. However, the report did not mention that his parents “had repeatedly asked the head of department if there was any way of reducing the academic load on Aniket,” to quote from their 10-page testimony submitted to IIT-B after his death.

Despite asking, they were not informed about the possibility of converting the dual degree MTech programme Aniket had enrolled for, to a shorter BTech programme.

Aniket’s death was described as an accident. The report included comments from unnamed friends who claimed that he did not appear to be “somebody who would commit suicide”.

Media reporting also did not mention Aniket’s growing preoccupation with religion and spirituality – he was raised in an atheist household – as he tried to navigate academics and his SC origins.

The IIT system provides for an SC/ST adviser for the redressal of caste grievances, and there is acknowledgement that caste plays some role in the life of SC students (and tribal students, for whom an additional 7.5 percent of seats are reserved).

Some caste bias does shows up on campus, mostly as upper-caste students expressing their discontent with the reservation system.

Devang Khakhar, Director of IIT Bombay, told IndiaSpend

Questions have arisen over the efficacy of the redressal of caste grievances. Filmmaker Anoop Kumar of the 2011 documentary Death of Merit said that 80 percent of those who committed suicides in the IITs between 2007 and 2011 were Dalits, and none of these institutes had a grievance-redressal mechanism to address caste-based discrimination.

Sunita now wonders if Aniket’s problems began when he stepped into IIT-B as a Dalit and whether they stemmed from him believing that his academic woes were a result of his inability to reconcile with his origins. This left him with the belief that he was undeserving of a seat at India’s premier engineering college – an attitude confirmed by the King’s College London study.

Could it have helped Aniket if there were at least some professors who shared his background? There are, for a start, very few Dalit professors in India’s 23 IITs.

Only 1.1% of IIT Faculty Is Dalit. How Does This Affect Dalit Students?

The quota system policy was designed in the 1950s as an early form of affirmative action to ensure that higher education institutions retained 15 percent of their places for Dalit students; the same proportion of faculty was also expected to come from this background.

Faces of Discrimination in Higher Education in India: Quota Policy, Social Justice and the Dalits

In July 2016, IndiaSpend reported how affirmative action helps students from disadvantaged backgrounds get college admission.

Hover over the chart for more details. BC-A, BC-B, BC-C, BC-D refer to sub-categories A, B, C, D of Backward Caste. SC: Scheduled Caste, ST: Scheduled Tribe. (Source: American Economic Review)

A 2008 government order instructed the IITs to employ 15 percent, 7.5 percent and 27 percent SC, ST and other backward caste (OBC) faculty, respectively – in line with the quota system being implemented for student admissions since 1973 – at the entry-level post of assistant professor and lecturer in science and technology subjects and across all faculty posts in other subjects.

Almost a decade on, you can count the number of SC and ST faculty in the IITs on your fingers.

Dalit faculty made up no more than 1.12 percent of IIT faculty positions in December 2012, according to this statement made in the Lok Sabha (parliament’s lower house) that year: 0.12 percent of IIT faculty were tribals, while OBC faculty were 1.84 percent. The proportion of SCs and STs were 16.6 percent and 8.6 percent respectively, as per the 2011 census.

As on June 2015, according to an answer received by a right-to-information request by a former student, quoted in this 26 June, 2015, report in The Hindu, 2.42 percent of faculty in IIT Madras were SC or ST, based on faculty positions filled, while the similar figure for IIT Bombay was 0.34 percent.

This lack of SC/ST faculty could affect students from traditionally disadvantaged groups.

Sociologist Virginius Xaxa, professor of eminence, Tezpur University, who has studied the adverse attitude – as this commentary details – towards SC/ST students in Delhi University said:

Considerate and supportive faculty who are genuinely sympathetic to student’s problems are few. The pervasive attitude is that students coming through quotas are undeserving.

Sociologist Virginius Xaxa

Why Do IITs Lack SC/ST/OBC Faculty?

Too few applicants: this is the overriding reason for not having enough SC/ST faculty, the directors of IIT Bombay, IIT Kanpur and IIT Madras told IndiaSpend.

We have very few scheduled caste faculty because we receive too few applicants from this category.

Devang Khakhar, Director of IIT Bombay

We receive too few good-quality applications from SC/ST candidates who meet the minimum threshold for an IIT faculty. While we are committed to the law and our social obligation, we are also keen to protect the IIT brand, a globally recognised Indian brand that has taken fifty years to build.

Indranil Manna, Director, IIT Kanpur

Could prejudice impede the employment of faculty from disadvantaged communities?

In August 2016, the Madras High Court concluded that IIT Madras had committed “gross irregularity” in passing over associate professor WB Vasantha – a faculty member from a backward caste – for promotion in 1995, and then again in 1997, for lesser-qualified candidates.

“There is no corner of India where prejudice against Dalits doesn’t exist,” said Anand Teltumbde, senior professor, Goa Institute of Management, formerly with IIT Kharagpur.

It took the public sector many years to overcome resistance to employ Dalits at managerial levels. India has reconciled itself to admitting Dalit students in the IITs, but resistance to admitting Dalit faculty is still very strong, a Dalit must expect to fight the system.

Teltumbde, BR Ambedkar’s grandson

Some IITs Are Bending Rules to Increase SC/ST Faculty, Others Do Nothing

Some of the IITs that IndiaSpend contacted for comments have started to bend the rules to increase the number of SC/ST faculty. Some are doing nothing.

We have not taken any specific measures to increase the number of faculty members belonging to the scheduled castes.

Devang Khakhar, Director of IIT Bombay

Almost all the SC/ST faculty on the rolls of IIT Delhi today were hired a couple of years ago during a special recruitment drive, a senior faculty member, requesting anonymity given the sensitivity of the topic, told IndiaSpend.

IIT Madras has considered conducting a special recruitment drive for SC/ST faculty, over and above its six-monthly recruitment cycle. However, “so far, a special drive does not seem like an idea that will give us more candidates as we are constantly on the lookout for SC/ST candidates during regular recruitment”, said Bhaskar Ramamurthi, director, IIT Madras.

IIT Kanpur’s Manna sees rolling advertisement on the website as a better option to recruit SC/ST faculty than a separate, one-time recruitment drive. “A drive would only provide access to talent existing at a given point of time,” he said.

SC/ST applicants compete against general category applicants in regular recruitment. Does that increase the odds against them?

Manna does not think so: “SC/ST candidates would not be disadvantaged because they are treated under a separate category with a different level of expectation,” he said.

At the entry level, applicants need not possess “a superlative record”, said Manna. A doctoral degree from a “decent” university, a good academic background, some good publications and a couple of years of work experience.

The IIT Kanpur director added that the institute would only relax the work-experience requirement for an “exceptional” SC/ST doctoral candidate and “appoint such a candidate on a contractual basis with scope for regularisation in due course”.

“I would definitely prefer the SC/ST candidate if I had three candidates of different social status but comparable merit and qualification,” said Manna.

We relax the age and work experience norms for OBC/SC/ST candidates to ensure more candidates from among those who apply are called for interview. We also ensure representation from reserved categories in the selection committee when we have OBC/SC/ST applicants. They make allowance for skills which can be picked up with experience.

Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director, IIT Madras

Improve the Learning Environment, Offer Training to Increase SC/ST Faculty

At a 13 December 2016, meeting of directors of the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) – India’s chain of prestigious management institutions, where too the government has urged faculty quotas – to discuss ways to increase faculty from traditionally disadvantaged communities, the IIM Kashipur representative described special fellow programme in management for SC/ST doctoral students, who will simultaneously be trained for faculty positions.

Asked whether he could consider absorbing his institute’s own fresh SC/ST/OBC doctorates as junior faculty, Manna said:

The IITs follow a strict policy on preventing inbreeding. We would prefer that our doctorates work away for a few years, then return to us if they are interested.

Instead, he suggested that the government take on the training of SC/ST doctorates with potential, with the intention of bringing them up to the IIT standard.

It isn’t enough to legislate and require IITs to employ a certain number of SC/ST faculty. Surely a group of 100 SC/ST entry-level faculties can be created to start with?

Indranil Manna, Director, IIT Kanpur

IIT Madras has relaxed the prevention-of-inbreeding condition for SC/ST doctoral scholars. “But like our PhD scholars from the general category, our graduating SC/ST scholars often join other centrally funded technical institutes, national laboratories, industry, foreign universities, etc.,” said Ramamurthi.

Improving the learning environment and training potential candidates in-house would likely help retain more SC/ST doctoral scholars.

“Students aware of the environment in the IITs may be reluctant to join as faculty,” said Tezpur University’s Xaxa “Academic progress depends greatly on how comfortable you feel in an environment.” Aniket, clearly, did not.

(Bahri is a freelance writer and editor based in Mount Abu, Rajasthan.)

(This article was first published in IndiaSpend.)