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 For all the talk about ‘social justice’, Delhi University has no Dalit Principals in its 77 colleges; as for professors, you can count them on your hands.
Delhi: Delhi University (DU), one of the oldest in the country, can claim to have implemented reservations in staff recruitment since July 1997. But, as is to be expected from academia perhaps, practice has proven to be different from theory.
Some key facts: none of the 77 colleges of the University have an SC or ST Principal, and hardly any of its 80 departments has one as head of the department. A study conducted by Prof RK Kale in 2006 revealed that out of 719 faculty members in DU, there was just one professor each from the SC and ST communities. Information obtained through RTI shows that, out of the total 300 readers in the various departments, only four are from SC and one from ST community. The number of lecturers belonging to the SC/ST communities is also far from satisfactory by the reservation system’s own standards. Sharing his experiences as a history teacher at Hindu College, Senior Lecturer Ratan Lal, who belongs to the Dalit community, says it is nearly impossible for someone like him to get a university teaching job without reservation. “Candidates in the reserved category often find it difficult to secure teaching positions despite having the same qualifications as those in the general category, often because interview boards act with prejudice and an attitude of cultural dominance,” he says. The result is that despite having high-level educational qualifications, most Dalit teachers in DU still avoid revealing their caste identity. Currently, if there is an increasingly vocal demand for proper implementation of reservations in DU, it is partly because the current head of the University Grants Commission, Sukhadeo Thorat, is a Dalit himself. The poor representation of SC and ST lecturers in DU exists despite the fact that Prof Kale’s study found that almost half of the lecturer positions were lying vacant. Not surprisingly, the opponents of reservation maintain that the low numbers of Dalits in teaching posts are simply because they are either not available or not suitable. But the fact is that the logic of ‘non-suitability’ is applied mostly in disciplines like Economics, English and Commerce where the medium is usually English, and where reserved category candidates can be conveniently disqualified on the claim that they lack competence in the English language. While the issue of the non-availability and non-suitability of SC and ST candidates for teaching positions needs to be critically examined, the logic hardly applies to non-teaching positions. According to the figures presented by the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions in 2005, only 11.9 per cent are SCs and 4.3 per cent STs among those employed in Group A jobs in India, whereas the percentage of STs and STs in the lowermost rung of the ladder, that of sweepers, were 59.2 and 4.9 respectively. The reason for such imbalance - visible in any institution, including DU - is simple: the decision-making bodies in the country are controlled by dominant castes. For instance, there is no reservation for the representation of SCs and STs in the DU’s Executive Council and Academic Council, the key decision-making bodies of the University. Given how the reservation system works in practice, the ‘non-suitability’ of reserved category candidates seems artificially created to avoid appointing them. The startling statistics from DU - a central university, and one of the country’s most prestigious - should serve as an eye-opener for all concerned. The situation in other universities across the India is no different; if anything it is much worse. It is ironical that academicians who talk endlessly about “social justice” have no qualms in flouting the very rules meant to pave the way towards a more equitable society. (Courtesy: Tehelka dated 25 July 2008) http://www.tehelka.com/story_main40.asp?filename=cr020808practise_preacher.asp
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