How The DU SC/ST math cut-off show the reality of casteism in India

Rachelle
Rachelle
Aug 22, 2017 · 10 min read
Many people who shared that article shared similar emotions and abused Dalits.

(This article addresses Dalits because the majority of abuses and hate from this story has been towards SC people. Even though the cut-off was for both SC and ST. This itself highlights the generational casteism people carry for Dalit-Bahujans).

Just a few weeks ago the zero cut off for Ph.D Mathematics was circulated as some standard of declining education because of reservation. Not to mention that reservation is not even properly implemented in India and upper castes have always chosen to go study abroad irrespective of reservations.

The news outlets that covered this story did in a demeaning and casteist way.

This person on twitter which Indian Express and many other outlets published on their news website have only 6 tweets.

Being upper caste means that your voice is validated and heard when you have just a few tweets and nothing else to make you an expert. While being Dalit means that you have to be exceedingly qualified for people to take your opinion seriously in anything including your own experiences.

This article was written by Anjali Bisaria where I quote “ How did the Department of Mathematics at DU even come up with this cut-off? Why does the OBC have to score an 84? Oh, let’s not even heed the sound of the Unreserved’s breaking hearts who have to score a 94 to qualify.”

And Suri Sahu writes “There are a lot of problems that plague India’s path to progress. But amidst all, the reservation system manages to push all the wrong buttons. In case you haven’t noticed already, reservation of seats also cripples the education department and does little to help India’s growing unemployment problem.And I say this out of my firsthand experience. But just when we thought the reservation ratio in India couldn’t get any worse, Delhi University has opened the gates of hell. Let me elaborate that.”

Perhaps, she needs to understand that affirmative action is followed worldwide and it has allowed societies to grow better

The news outlets that did publish clarifications, however, well intended were very late and of course received fewer shares on Facebook or on other social media sites.

From Citizen written by Ravikiran Shinde: “Clearly, the circular of the interview schedule was either erroneous or had malicious intention. As the result page on the DU shows, lowest marks received by the candidates who appeared for written examination was 46. This bursts the ‘zero cut off theory for SC/ST students’.”

From Newslaundry written by Cherry Agarwal: “The reportage on the notification apart from highlighting the pitfalls of journalism-for-clicks again points at the lack of diversity in the newsroom. Surely, if both Express and India Today newsrooms had journalists from the so-called reserved categories, the reportage wouldn’t have ended up being so callous. At the very least, there would have been an attempt to correct the narrative with follow-up stories.”

And everyone’s favourite punching bag Buzzfeed which supposedly feeds off clickbaits carried an article that addressed this issue better than any news outlet.

Written by Tejas Harad: “In premier institutions of learning, the number of applicants for unreserved seats is far greater than the seats available, and this competition pushes the cut-offs higher. The pool of applicants for reserved seats remains small and hence the cut-offs low. If inequality at lower levels of education suddenly disappears, the pool for reserved seats will naturally increase and so will the cut-offs. Simply put, the gap in cutoffs is representative of the gap in access to social, cultural and economic capital.”

Addressing the concern that there should be ‘standards’. Let’s look at the standards of people who apply for the Ph.D Mathematics course.

There are enough ‘standards’ put in place. So what is bothering them?

^There are no reservations in schools. Education is a right in India. Many Dalit-Bahujan students go to government schools and we all know in what state that is. The rich who can afford to go to private schools have mostly been upper caste and it because of that ‘individual’ greed of “my kids should be better than everyone” instead of thinking everyone should have access to great education, private schools are increasing and public school education has become horrible.

Instead of demanding equal education in terms of quality for all at school level, upper castes only complain about reservation at graduate/postgraduate levels

In fact, much has been written about this. The school system in both UK and USA, only a small number of multi-millionaires go to private school but in India, it’s the opposite. And mostly the better the school is, the number of upper castes one will be able to see in the school increases.

“Pidcock’s observations are borne out by statistics: despite just 7% of the population attending private school, they make up nearly one-third of MPs. This is supposed to be seen as a good thing, because it’s down from nearly half in 1979. In the judiciary, the situation is even worse, with around three-quarters of top judges having gone to private school. In journalism, things are going backwards, with more journalists now coming from private schools than in 1987 (51% compared to 49%). This is what sociologists call “elite self-reproduction” — the practice of privileged individuals ensuring that privilege is passed on to their children using social infrastructure.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/07/restrict-privately-educated-britains-elite-quota

Why the concern of someone ‘undeserved’ will get through was misplaced

Total number of available seats in the Ph.D. programme in Mathematics is only 27 according to the brochure of DU. (Annexure IV)

There are different categories of people who qualify for the interview only one of them being the DU Entrance.

  1. The people who have fellowships are directly called for interview.
    “Candidates who have cleared a national level examination like CSIR/UGC-NET-JRF, DBT-JRF, ICMR-JRF, DST-INSPIRE or equivalent valid fellowship may appear for an interview without appearing in the departmental entrance test. Candidates who have appeared in the above examinations but await results may also apply. However, they shall be called for the interview only upon providing a valid documentary evidence of having qualified for the fellowship. Candidates who have already initiated their fellowships in some other institution and are interested to have the fellowship transferred to the University of Delhi may also apply, provided the period of available fellowship is at least 4 years. The candidates who have been awarded lectureship in the CSIR/UGC- NET (or equivalent examination) may also directly appear for an interview.”
  2. DU Faculty members also appear directly for the interview. Access it here: (http://admission.du.ac.in/upload_phd2017/site/ordinance.pdf)

But the most important is that candidates are selected based on the interview, making the examination a mere qualifying factor. This move was questioned and opposed by many people because of the inherent biases interviewers show towards SC/ST candidates.

“The demand to scrap the undemocratic and forced imposition of the 5 May, 2016 UGC notification (un-popularly known as UGC gazette notification) which will result in massive seat cut and an effectively 100 percent weightage to the viva component in entrance examination. Such measures will destroy the hopes of millions of students who dream of a university education from an affordable, inclusive institution like JNU. The viva component has been shown to be discriminatory through data collected over several years by the JNU students’ union, and hence the demand to lower its weightage.”

Important to note here is there is no breakdown of those 27 seats according to SC/ST/OBC.

According to this report on the DU Website Merit list- 43 SC candidates have given the entrance exam. (http://www.du.ac.in/du/uploads/Admissions/2017/EntResults/14072017_MPh17SC_Maths.pdf)

The below is the shortlisted candidates list

Shortlisted Candidates for Math Ph.D Admission 2017
(http://www.du.ac.in/du/uploads/Faculty%20Profiles/2017/Botany/18082017_Maths_PhD_List.pdf)

List of names:

Amlendu Kumar: UGC-CSIR-NET Fellowship candidate
Satish Kumar: DU Faculty
Vikesh Kumar: TTL Score: 56 Cat Rank: 12
Anuradha Sabharwal: CSIR-NET Fellowship candidate

Waiting List
Dheeraj Singh: TTL Score: 49 Cat Rank: 15
Arushi: TTL Score:60 |Cat Rank:8

It must be noted that Arushi who has a rank of 8 is on the waiting list and Vikesh Kumar with rank 12 has qualified. So should we assume something sinister? Even after many people repeteadly clarified that there is still an interview process and someone with zero marks is highly unlikely to be qualified, people did not listen. In fact, the very same people who were so outraged without even doing a basic check of facts, when Dalit students repeatedly say that they were discriminated in the interview because of caste, are not believed. When Dalit students say that their Ph.D Thesis is rejected multiple times, they are not believed.

“A recent survey of the selection process at the Centre for Russian and Central Asian Studies in the School of International Studies, for instance, showed that out of the 92 students who participated in the Viva Voce, over 92% of the students who did not qualify belonged to SC, ST and OBC categories. Out of 37 students who received only one or two marks out of a possible 30, 36 students were from these categories.”
[http://www.thenewsminute.com/article/injustice-viva-voce-dalit-jnu-scholar-s-death-and-undemocratic-selection-process-58576]

Also, none of these people have actually commented about how a former HC judge Mahesh Chandra Sharma who said peacocks didn’t have sex went on to justify that his theory didn’t need scientific evidence as it was backed by religious texts.

How did this judge get a seat? Should we talk about how his caste played a part? The unspoken reservations that upper castes use and propagate consciously and sub-consciously?

Or how about “the National president of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) K K Aggarwal who said “Lord Shiva presents a very Vedic way of anger management. Whenever you are filled with resentment, store the negative thoughts in your throat. After some time, think about the issue at hand with a cool mind”.

Should we talk about how someone who can’t understand basic grammar and can use “full of talent” in a bio-data can become a medical chief, was a topper and received all these awards?

Excerpt from KK Aggarwal Three Page Biodata

Other Links:

http://www.firstpost.com/india/jnu-students-suicide-caste-injustice-suppression-of-dissent-under-modi-govt-killed-muthukrishnan-jeevanantham-3334262.html

http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/peacocks-don-t-have-sex-former-rajasthan-hc-judge-says-don-t-need-scientific-proof-religious-texts-back-theory-interview/story-raQwpOIQ3sWLgJAICW4UfK.html

)
Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade