New Delhi: An RTI query has revealed that members of the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) are distinctly underrepresented as scientists in institutions funded by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT).
According to a report in The Hindu, RTI queries and responses showed that for posts where reservations were not necessary, such as those of scientists and technical grade staff, representation from reserved categories, excluding the OBCs, is restricted to below 10%.
Many institutions very narrowly fulfil the criteria stipulated by the government for reservation – that 15% and 7.5% of all seats in centrally funded educational institutions be reserved for SC and ST candidates respectively.
The Hindu report also pointed out that while 34 out of 208 permanent employees were SC/ST candidates at the National Institute of Immunology (NII), an organisation funded by the DBT, only two from the SC category were scientists. Group A scientists belong to the pay grade level 10 and above, where SC/ST reservations don’t apply.
At the Regional Centre for Biotechnology, another Department of Biotechnology (DBT) institute, of the four of the 44 permanent posts were held by SC/ST candidates, none were in the scientist category.
Also read: The Closed Doors of Caste in India
The highest representation of SCs and STs among scientists with five SC candidates and two ST candidates was at the National Centre for Cell Sciences in Pune.
Ashok Kumar, the applicant who filed the RTIs, told The Hindu that of 16 DBT institutions, only nine responded to his queries with information regarding the representation of scientists
Responding to queries, Renu Swarup, Secretary of DBT, told The Hindu that the institute had been notified of the issue of underrepresentation and had put into place a formula “to ensure that scientists are adequately represented” and that the institute’s recruitments as of this May “reflect this”. She also added, “however, recruitment also has to factor available vacancies, backlog, and skills required”.
In January, responding to a Lok Sabha question, Minister Prakash Javadekar disclosed that less than 3% of those teaching at the Indian Institutes of Technology across the country are from reserved categories with only 149 candidates from the Scheduled Castes and 21 from Scheduled Tribes out of 6,043 faculty members.