Do students from reserved categories in the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) pay no tuition fees?
Not just in IITs but in most central institutes in India, Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST) students are generally exempt from paying tuition fees for undergraduate programmes.
While the premier technical institutes across the country do offer benefits to students from reserved categories, essentially to promote inclusive and equitable access to quality education, this initiative was recently questioned in a social media post.
On December 28, an X user challenged the policy, stating, “IIT Bombay Tuition Fee (BTech): General category: Rs 8 Lakh; SC/ST: Rs 0. And then they say, ‘Reservation is not a poverty alleviation scheme!’ What a joke!!”
The argument quickly sparked a wave of comments from netizens, many of whom questioned the ‘fairness’ of the fee waiver policy for students from reserved categories.
However, several others raised a critical question — who is truly responsible for the rising cost of education?
Speaking to EdexLive, a member of the Ambedkar Periyar Phule Study Circle (APPSC) at IIT Bombay — an autonomous student group focused on addressing caste and reservation issues — argued that such reactions reflect the “deeply casteist nature of our society.”
“Arguments against reservation have persisted for years. However, what is often overlooked in this debate is the larger issue of the increasing privatisation of education. The real problem isn't the benefits given to the Non-Creamy Layer - Other Backward Class (NCL - OBC) and SC/STs through reservations; it lies in education policies that treat education as a commodity. These policies are gradually defunding public education and then placing the blame on reserved seats,” he said, on the condition of anonymity.
The APPSC member also highlighted that while the students from SC and ST categories are exempted from paying tuition fees, they are still required to pay other non-academic components of the total fees, which can cost anywhere around Rs 30,000 to 60,000 per semester, depending on the course.
“The government is steadily reducing funding for education while shifting the blame onto the very groups that are already marginalised, creating the false impression that these communities are unfairly benefiting at the expense of others. This amounts to additional burden on the reserved categories,” he claimed further.
Recently, there has been a substantial hike in the fees at IITs, as well as other centrally-funded institutes — not just tuition fees, but also mess charges, hostel fees, and other costs have gone up.
Students and activists from reserved categories expressed that these anti-reservation arguments often sideline the actual issues behind the rising cost of education, shifting the blame onto the reserved categories.
Kiran Kumar Gowd, President, All India OBC Students Association (AIOBCSA), said, “We urge intellectuals and public influencers to refrain from opposing progressive government initiatives and instead, focus on addressing and eliminating social inequalities. Historically, marginalised communities are being exploited and we have to undo these injustices.”
