Quotas fail to break caste ceiling in IITs

Akshaya Mukul, TNN | Sep 12, 2012, 03.43AM IST 

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NEW DELHI: If SCs/STs are abysmally under-represented as faculty members in central universities despite the stated policy of reservation in promotion, their presence in premier IITs is equally marginal. That there is no quota in promotion in IITs makes it even worse, leaving little room for them to occupy senior positions. IITs have reservation only at the entry level of assistant professor. 

While many IITs replied to RTI activist Mahendra Pratap Singh, IIT-Delhi and Bombay are yet to give their response. Another query to the Prime Minister's Office about social profile of scientists in the laboratories of Central Scientific & Industrial Research has not evinced any reply. 

IIT-Kharagpur, among the oldest, has only three SC professors, two associate professors and two assistant professors. There are no ST faculty members at all three levels. There are two OBC professors and seven assistant professors, but no associate professor. However, in the general category, there are 227 professors, 105 associate and 165 assistant professors. 

IIT-Madras, among the best in its ilk, has three SC professors, three associate professors and four assistant professors. Again, STs are unrepresented in two categories. A lone ST is assistant professor. Even OBCs are not there at the level of professor and associate professor, but there are seven assistant professors. 

Considering that Tamil Nadu has been the hotbed of social movement, under-representation of marginal castes and STs is intriguing. From the general category there are 212 professors, 91 associate professors and 177 assistant professors. 

Moving to the north to IIT-Roorkee, and the situation still does not change. Among the best in the world as a civil engineering institute, Roorkee has only one SC professor and associate professor. There are six SC and one ST assistant professor. OBCs are better placed in Roorkee with 11 professors, 11 associate professors and seven assistant professors. Among general category, there are 120 professors, 57 associate professors and 133 assistant professors. 

With representation so skewed in well-established IITs, new ones can hardly be blamed for not getting enough eligible SC/ST teachers. IIT-Ropar has absolutely no representation from SCs/STs at any position. There are two OBC assistant professors. IIT-Hyderabad has 12 SC, six ST and 22 OBC assistant professors. In IIT-Gandhinagar, there are only two OBC assistant professors, while SCs/STs have no representation at the three levels.

Marginal representation of SC-STs in IITs

No SC/ST professors in JNU, DU despite promotion quota

Akshaya Mukul, TNN | Sep 10, 2012, 01.51AM IST

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New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi University, Banaras Hindu University and Allahabad University, all of them directly under the HRD ministry, do not have a single SC/ST professor despite the policy of quota in promotions. 

Moreover, DU and JNU don’t have a single SC/ST associate professor (reader). 

BHU has three SC associate professors, not a single one from the ST category and 112 SC and 30 ST assistant professors (lecturers) which is the entry level post. In JNU, there are 25 SC and 10 ST assistant professors. However, it does not have a single SC/ST research scientist. Allahabad University has just one SC associate professor, STs again drawing a blank. At the lecturer level, Allahabad University has 15 SC and two STs. 

Absence of SCs/STs at the higher levels despite a policy of reservation in promotion is not confined to these four universities. An RTI query to University Grants Commission, JNU and BHU by Banaras-based Mahendra Pratap Singh revealed a similar situation in 31 central universities across India. 

In November 2011, O N Srivastava of BHU's department of physics wrote to vice-chancellor Lalji Singh arguing that reservation be given only at the entry level. This, he argued, would keep the “academic profile/glamour/ reputation of the university intact”. He also said reservation be given subject/department-wise. Srivastava’s contention was in direct contravention of UGC’s guidelines of 2006 that told all universities to resist from giving department-wise reservation which often resulted in creation of single posts to avoid quota. 

Immediately after Srivastava’s letter, BHU set up a committee under S C Lakhotia of the zoology department to review reservation criteria in recruitment. The committee said there should be no reservation at the level of associate professor and professor. The committee said since BHU was an institute of national importance, it was exempted from reservation for posts higher than the entry level. The panel cited Central Educational Institutions (Reservations in Admission) Act, 2007, to make this point. However,the Act gives exemption only to institutes of excellence and even lists them in the annexure. BHU, DU, JNU and Allahabad University are not part of them. 

Promotion quota from ’95 if law passed T he Centre proposes to implement reservation in promotion for SCs and STs in government jobs with retrospective effect from June 1995, according to the Bill introduced in the Rajya Sabha during the monsoon session. “It is also necessary to give retrospective effect to the proposed clause (4A) of Article 16 with effect from the date of coming into force of that clause as originally introduced, that is, from the 17th day of June, 1995,” the Bill states. This means that the measure will come into effect from 1995 when the Constitution was amended for the purpose of providing reservation in promotions for SCs/STs. AGENCIES 

SC/ST teaching posts are lying vacant in Central Universities

HT Correspondent
Lucknow, August 28, 2012

Most of the posts reserved for teachers from the scheduled caste(SC) and scheduled tribe(ST) categories are lying vacant in the central universities not only in the state alone but in other places also. A case in point is the Banaras Hindu University(BHU). A reply by the University Grants 

 

Commission(UGC) to a Right to Information Act(RTI) plea reveals that out of the 169 sanctioned posts reserved for teachers from the ST category 139 are lying vacant. As for the SC category, the university has 362 sanctioned posts out of which 247 are vacant. Lucknow based activist Mahendra Pratap Singh had filed the RTI plea in this regard.

The situation is even worse in the Aligarh Muslim University(AMU). Here 97 posts have been sanctioned for the STs and 208 for the SCs. The university however hasn't hired even one teacher from the ST category and only two teachers from the SC categories.

In the Allahabad University, only two of the sanctioned 57 posts for STs have been filled. For SCs, the university has 123 sanctioned posts of which only 16 have been filled.

The situation is comparatively better at the Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University(BBAU) in Lucknow. Here four out of nine sanctioned ST posts are filled. In the SC category, 16 out of 20 posts are filled. In fact, the figures show that nearly one third of the total sanctioned posts for STs have been filled in 31 central universities across the country. As for SC posts, the data auggests that only 30% are filled.

Of the total 998 sanctioned ST posts only 359 have been filled. For the SCs, out of 2139 sanctioned posts only 643(30%) have been filled. As per the norms, the SCs should constitute 15% and STs 7% of the teachers in the central universities. The central universities in Karnataka, Jammu and Kashmir, Kerala, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu stand at a better position with the institutions filling up more than 90% of the vacancies for the scheduled castes and the scheduled tribes.

5362 Teaching posts are vacant in Central Univerities

1580 Crore expenditure incurred in GANGA, last 27 years