Here's a shocking stat: Less than 1% of the Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Other Backward Class (OBC) staff in India's Central Universities have been promoted to the grade of Professor. What's even more telling is that only a paltry 5% of the teachers who have joined through the Scheduled Caste (SC) quota have made it to the upper rung of the academic foodchain. The data was revealed in response to a question raised by Member of Parliament from Rajasthan, Dr Kirodi Lal Meena, by the Minister of Human Resource Development Ramesh Pokhriyal in the Rajya Sabha session held on February 6. The MP queried why there was a low representation of people from the SC/ST/OBC categories in the upper rungs of academic faculty in Central Universities across India.
As many as 93% of professors in 40 of India's Central Universities fall under the General Category, according to a report from the Ministry of Human Resource Development. The HRD Minister responded with the grade-wise and category-wise number of faculty posts of SC, ST, OBC and Unreserved Category that are currently employed in 40 Central Universities and Indira Gandhi National Open University that fall under the Ministry as of January 1, 2020. According to the data released, only 5.9% of SC, 0.73% of ST and 0.33% of OBC professors are currently working in the universities.
As the grades get lower, the percentages begin to look up, The Ministry data also revealed that 91% of Associate Professors belong to the General category, while only 5.4% belong to the SC category, 1.5% to the ST category and 1.2 to the OBC category. With Assistant Professors, as many as 65% belong to the General category, while 12% are from SC, 5.9% are from ST and 16% are from OBC.
The Ministry clarified that the University Grants Commission has time and again issued instructions to the universities to implement the reservation policy of the government to uphold the constitutional provisions for safeguarding the interests of the underrepresented categories.They even listed how they had revised the law to include each university as a unit to allow for more recruitment within classes and about how they had given notifications in July, August, September and October 2019 to varsities to fill up staffing gaps with specific focus on maintaining reservation.
