IIT Delhi: After the recent deaths by suicide of two Scheduled Castes (SC) students at IIT Delhi, a campus-wide survey on caste discrimination was circulated by the Board for Student Publications (BSP) earlier this week — only to be suspended after a few hours.
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Several students on campus said that the survey had ‘irrelevant’ and ‘insensitive’ questions.
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A student speaking anonymously cited a survey question about the institute’s reservation policy to which students had to choose among the following responses: support its current form, replace with a new policy completely based on economic conditions, reservations should be abolished, or prefer not to answer. “Why would someone put the last option in the survey… what is so problematic to speak about it openly?” the student asked.
Questions were about students’ annual family income, rural or urban background, year of entry, gender and the degree being pursued. A question in the survey stated: “Suppose you’re hanging out with your peers in your hostel common room and someone makes a comment that a person from the reserved category ‘had it easier’ or something similar. How common is this in your peer group?”
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Speaking to The Indian Express, SC/ST cell liaison officer at IIT-Delhi, Pravin Ingole said: “The SC/ST cell is looking into it and we are in the process of releasing a new survey along with the BSP through official channels soon.”
“The survey did not go through official channels. The faculty member coordinating the BSP’s activities had advised student members of the board to consult the SC/ST cell, which they did not. There was miscommunication and the survey was released. The survey was shut down as soon as we found out,” said an institute official on the condition of anonymity.
The student head of the BSP who did not want to be named said: “We floated the survey earlier this week to understand the status of caste-based discrimination on campus. However, it has been temporarily withdrawn due to certain complaints from the institute’s SC/ST Cell. The matter has been resolved internally and BSP is currently engaging with the SC/ST cell to plan a new survey which will be released in the near future.”
A few weeks ago, Anil Kumar, an SC student at the institute, died by suicide. He joined IIT in 2019 to pursue BTech in Mathematics and Computing. Kumar’s suicide came a month after another student SC student at the institute, Ayush Ashna, also died by suicide.
However, the BSP student head sought to delink the survey from the suicides. “The survey is not directly related to the recent suicide at IIT-Delhi,” she claimed. “Rather, it is to get a general idea of casteism on campus. Work and planning for the survey started a couple of months back.”
