How campuses can arrest caste discrimination

(Sharing here my notes on what are the issues involved in setting up an institutional response to the issue of caste discrimination in JNU. Very JNU-specific I know, but putting it up any way, in the hope that this will initiate a genuine discussion.

Talk at the panel discussion on "Discrimination in Higher Educational Institutes: Setting up an institutional mechanism- the way ahead" organised by JNUSU-SSS&SIS on 9 February 2015.)

In order to have a meaningful discussion about caste-based discrimination in university spaces and the institutional response that it should elicit, it is necessary to list out some starting assumptions:

1. Caste-based discrimination exists. Those who believe it doesn't do not know or understand, or are willfully ignoring, their own privilege. Accepting and stating that it exists doesn't make the speaker casteist, any more than accepting that gender discrimination and sexual harassment exist makes the speaker a sexual harasser.

2. The educational system that we are in always (has the potential to) reproduce caste (old and "new") and caste-based discrimination and it does so not BECAUSE of reservations but IN SPITE OF them. Just as gender discrimination existed even when women didn't have the rights to higher education or work, not having reservations does NOT the solution.

3. Everyone enters the university by merit. Some people get in with the aid of centuries of caste privilege, others get in on the strength of nothing but their intellectual commitments and hard work, and the sacrifices of their families and communities.

It seems to me that the institutional response has to be on three levels:

* Ensuring equity of access to the institution and its various programmes

* Ensuring an enriching and meaningful intellectual university life for students who have gotten into university on their own without caste privilege.

* Ensuring a working and living atmosphere that is free of caste discrimination.

1. Ensuring equity of access to the institution and its various programmes

While the current system assumes that reservation is all that you need to ensure equity of access to all SC/ST students, the recent years in JNU have indicated that much more needs to be done wherever subjective components like viva voce etc are involved. The JNUSU alerted the university community to the fact that there is/may be a statistically significant underperformance of SC/ST candidates in the viva voce examination. Such a palpable trend across the University suggests that there can be no one single cause underlying this underperformance, and that our response to it must be multi-pronged.

In a proposal that Madhu Sahni and I made in 2012 to the VC with the help of statistician, we suggested a number of measures beyond mere reduction of marks of the viva voce (as was suggested by the JNUSU), as that may serve only to shrink the scale of evaluation. These included moving to an evaluation system that weighted the written part of the examination system for ALL students, developing a clear metric on which performance in the viva voce would be evaluated which in turn meant that we would have to define a viva voce format, a regular information and evaluation of admission procedures and results by the Equal Opportunities Office. What is important in the current context is not the details of our proposals, but rather that we need to think out of the box in order to promote equity of access in the university to diverse populations and not only SC/ST students. While the university cannot ameliorate all the inequities of the social system in general, it MUST try and eliminate them in its own procedures.

2. Ensuring an enriching and meaningful intellectual university life for students

In the aftermath of Rohith Vemula’s institutional murder, the academic difficulties faced by Dalit students across the country have come into sharp focus. Amongst these are many general issues: withdrawal/stoppage of fellowship, delay in allotment of supervisor and release of fellowships, hostel difficulties, but all of which have especially disastrous consequences for SC/ST students. Obviously, these malpractices have to be eliminated for the benefit of all students, but sensitivity to the special circumstances of Dalit students in all these is absolutely necessary, because most of these students shoulder more than just the economic burden of themselves alone.

One oft-mentioned problem in the various articles that have appeared is Dalit students’ own comments about how many feel academically ill-equipped in the central universities. JNU has several schemes for this, such as the linguistic empowerment cell for teaching English, and the personalised tutoring system, but the chief problem is that there is no substantive involvement of the students themselves in framing the manner and content of the delivery of these schemes or in a periodic evaluation of these schemes. In fact, we do not even know that these schemes are working. This has to change at once, and can only do so, if we make the first step to be one of information gathering about the range of academic difficulties that SC/ST students face as well as the effect that these schemes have had.

A second oft-mentioned issue is that of ‘keeping up’, where previous education has been of a poor quality and caste discrimination a persistent impediment. It is certainly a possibility within the JNU system to think of a slow-track BA and MA as the ordinances allow for two semesters extra. Rather than extending this option only when the student fails a course, an amendment that allows the student to slow-track through the degree is something worth exploring. Many issues will of course arise vis-a-vis curriculum and syllabus design, but they CAN be dealt with. Most importantly, slow track degrees for SC/ST students must be with full scholarship and hostel degrees. For the M.Phil., which does not allow any extension, there are two options — one obviously to extend the duration of the degree itself, and the other to think of introducing a “taught M.Phil” programme, where in lieu of a dissertation, there is coursework for four semesters.

The thorniest knot of all, however is to create a system of evaluation in course-work that is sensitive to the facts of historical educational and derivational disadvantage. The current metric teachers use asks them to evaluate students only on the basis of responses to questions and leaves their histories and biographies out of the picture. Typically, SC/ST students do not do as well as they could in the beginning, and doing badly contributes to a feeling of alienation and a loss of confidence. How can such sensitivity be built in, just as we build it into the entrance examination system by deprivation points? Should we extend this system into evaluation for coursework? In a system where even declaring a grading policy per course is not standardly implemented across Centres, how can deprivation points be added on top of scores? How long should deprivation points survive after admission is given? These are just some of the questions that need collective meditation.

3. Ensuring a working and living atmosphere that is free of caste discrimination.

Speaking as a person who has caste and class privilege, I do not understand the exact nature of caste discrimination on the campus, although I have seen glimpses of it, particularly in the responses of students and workers when they are victims of sexual harassment. I will not however arrogate to myself the right to speak about their experiences, but rather focus on why restructuring the Equal Opportunities Office to a GSCASH like committee is the best way to tackle not only instances of caste discrimination but also ensuring equity of access and substantive quality. This is not to say of course that caste discrimination is identical to gender discrimination, but rather that the relative success we have had with one may be used as a motivation to trying the same method to define, analyze, and tackle a different problem.

* Since 1999, when the GSCASH was formed after more than two years of struggle, an old problem that had beset generations of constituents of the JNU community suddenly got a name: sexual harassment, and this name was given not by the will of an aggrieved person and her supporters, or by some administrative fiat but by a process of deliberation carried out by sections of community designated to do this job. A complainant’s experiences — that the sexually determined behaviour was "unwelcome" — play the critical role in defining the charges, rather than official papers alone. Caste discrimination too must get its name now, and I would suggest by the same process.

* The fact that the GSCASH committee is representative and constituted by popular election ensures that sexual harassment and questions of gender equality and equity are addressed on a large scale every year in various constituencies and throughout the year. The fact that GSCASH is clearly 50% women by ‘reservation’ of seats and headed by a woman is crucial in guiding the committee’s perspective on gender relations on the campus. Extending this model to the EOC will clearly involve major changes — how should we reserve seats? Should it be exclusively SC and ST? Or do we include minorities and OBCs in it? Who will be the electorate? Who can be the candidates — but these are details that can be worked out by involvement of the whole community.

* The independence of GSCASH from the university administration particularly when it comes to inquiries is crucial in insulating it from pressure from senior levels. The EOC should also be armed with inquiry functions and should be the sole body that is vested with the authority to conduct inquiries into allegations of caste discrimination. Having the GSCASH around has created a sensitive university internal procedure (rather than going to the police) for complainants to access in confidentiality for redressal, a process that goes into each complaint in an impartial manner. Having such a process has created an atmosphere in which complaints are not instrumentalist or sensationalised, as now the first port of call when an incident has occurred is the GSCASH rather than the police.

* In the learning process that GSCASH is, collective knowledge about what IS sexual harassment and what isn’t, have been built for an entire university community. Because of the challenges thrown up by GSCASH cases, University procedures and ordinances have had to change and become more democratic. We should want the same for caste discrimination, as it is only through this process that we can truly redress this inequity, set the norms for social and academic conduct, and create the conditions for the empowerment of a plural and egalitarian view of the university as social and educational space.

The JNU GSCASH has had a profound impact upon the expectations from anti-sexual harassment committees in universities across the country; its rules and procedures have even influenced the national law (e.g., protection against victimisation and the issue of orders of restraint). Its time to do the same for issues of caste discrimination. If we don’t start now, UGC mandated Equal Opportunity Centres that disappear the real issues of caste and discrimination will take over.

In a notification of January 29, 2016, the UGC recommends EOCs that will sensitise “mainstream sections of the society towards the problems of the marginalised/disadvantaged sections of the society so that they can improve their performance not only inn the education but also in other spheres of life”, and by doing so makes the issue of the annihilation of caste the responsibility of the persons most affected by it. To move away from this discourse of “upliftment” in which upper castes remain the mainstream, to a discourse of rights and entitlements in which neither pity nor patronage rule, it is imperative that we act in unison.

(This post was first published on the author's Facebook page.)