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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | How historical caste privilege became modern-day ‘merit’ -Dipayan Pal

How historical caste privilege became modern-day ‘merit’ -Dipayan Pal

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published Published on May 10, 2021   modified Modified on May 16, 2021

-The Indian Express

In a nation where access to education remains a fundamental issue and where an individual’s success largely depends on access to resources, shaped by socio-economic and caste advantages, 'merit' is just another form of discrimination.

While a public health crisis grips the nation, the recent incident at IIT Kharagpur where a professor named Seema Singh at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences allegedly made casteist slurs during a class meant for students from the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes and persons with disabilities must have raised eyebrows.

This shouldn’t have been the case since IITs have a long history of systematically othering students belonging to marginalised caste groups. Current students and alumni coming out on social media after the incident, with their own stories of experiencing this kind of prejudice, show the rampant casteism prevalent across IIT campuses in the nation.

Historically, technical knowledge was the domain of lower-caste artisans. It was later embraced by upper castes. In independent India, IITs were established as “institutions of national importance” that would form the uppermost tier of a stratified structure of postcolonial technical training to produce an elite cadre of nation-builders.

Education is a great equaliser — an instrument of upward social mobility. However, technical education in the name of promoting an objective and politically neutral form of knowledge has obscured the role of caste stratification and caste distinction in shaping access to and experiences of engineering education. This raises a fundamental question about the big IIT story: How did historical advantage become modern-day “merit”?

Merit is often seen as a neutral term and is measured through various examinations to measure an individual’s ability. In a nation where access to education remains a fundamental issue, with wide disparities in curricula, the “merit” we all talk about is just another form of discrimination and exclusion since the performance of an individual in any given examination, such as the JEE, depends largely on their access to various resources which are largely shaped by their caste, socio-economic status, schooling and upbringing.

Since upper castes had better access to resources, they were able to transform their inherited capital into a claim to merit and refashioned themselves as contemporary meritocratic subjects. As a result, soon, they began dominating these elite spaces, where they further promoted and reinforced their own cultural capital.

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The Indian Express, 10 May, 2021, https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/how-historical-caste-privilege-became-modern-day-merit-lower-caste-upper-caste-7309875/?fbclid=IwAR0z3uakhPh3xywIsft_otZwsF0YCnU9FyrA169BkB6oFrIJzjOgQKf-Xxc


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