Ranks asked of over 37% SC,ST students: IIT-Bombay survey

Survey conducted in Feb, 2022, 388 students responded, 77 described instances of discrimination in detail

“Even EWS (Economically Weaker Sections) people feel that they come here through genuine reservation as compared to us. EWS openly tells our case is genuine unlike you,” a Dalit student of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B) said in an Open House on caste discrimination held months before 18-year-old Darshan Solanki, another Dalit student, died by suicide inside the campus, a few months into his Chemical Engineering course. 

Months before this Open House on caste-discrimination, IIT-B’s SC/ST Students Cell had conducted a detailed survey of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe students in February 2022, in which 388 SC/ST students participated, out of whom, 77 students described in detail the kinds of caste-based discrimination they faced while on campus. 

The survey, results of which The Hindu has seen, showed that 37.1% of these students were asked their JEE/GATE/JAM/(U)CEED ranks within the institute by fellow students seeking to know their identity. In addition, 26% of the respondent students said that they had been asked their surname with the intention of knowing their caste. 

Further, the SC/ST Students Cell survey pointed out that over 21.5% of students were afraid of facing backlash from students or faculty if they talked about caste-discrimination in the institute, while another 25.5% said they were unsure of how they would react. 

Responding to the survey, 29.4% students said that they were not comfortable discussing their caste identity in the campus and over 33% students said they would only discuss it with “a very close friend”, which in most cases happen to be people from the same social background as themselves. 

The internal inquiry panel probing Solanki’s death, had recorded in its interim report, a testimony from one of his friends (from the SC/ST community), who had pointed out that he was “sensitive about his caste identity”. In addition to this, Solanki’s sister had deposed before the panel, describing how he was laughed at for asking questions about computers. 

However, in the interim report of March 2, the panel said there was “no specific evidence” of caste discrimination in the case. A day after Mr. Solanki died, the Institute had said caste discrimination, “if at all it occurs, is an exception”.