Trigger warning: Mentions of casteist abuse and suicide
In April 2021, videos surfaced on the internet that showed Seema Singh, an associate professor at IIT Kharagpur, hurling abuses at students of marginalised castes and/or with physical disabilities during an online class. Her tirade was allegedly a response to a student not standing up for the national anthem and not saying “
Bharatmata ki jai“.
Another video shows Singh responding publicly to a student’s email asking for a few days’ leave after her grandfather had succumbed to COVID-19. In her response, Singh calls the request an example of “non-application of the human mind”, among other things.
Disgusted : Over 1000 IIT Alumni Write to Kharagpur Director on Professor s Casteist Abuse
The former students have noted that the IITs, notoriously hostile to Dalits, Adivasis and backward castes , need to take steps to ensure such an incident never happens.
File image of IIT Kharagpur. Photo: iitkgp.ac.in
Education29/Apr/2021
New Delhi: More than 1,000 former students of the Indian Institutes of Technology have written an open letter to the IIT Kharagpur director registering their disgust and shock over a professor’s behaviour with students at a preparatory English class meant for SC, ST and OBC students and students with physical disabilities.
April 27, 2021
A video of a professor calling her students “bloody bastards” has sparked outrage around how minorities are treated at India’s elite institutes.
In a video that went viral on social media on April 25, Seema Singh, a professor at the department of humanities and social sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur (IIT-KGP), can be seen and heard foul-mouthing students and berating them after she thought some of them had not stood up for the national anthem.
The video was first posted on the Facebook page IIT-KGP confessions.
The video was shot during Singh’s Prep English Course, which is meant for students from the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes and persons with disabilities. The one-year preparatory class is aimed at helping students from these communities to secure a seat the following year if they make the cut-off but are unable to get direct admission.
At IITs, PhD Applicants from Marginalised Communities Have Much Lower Acceptance Rate
Data covering PhD admissions to major IITs between 2015 and 2019 shows that none of them fulfilled the government-mandated reservation policy for SC and ST students.
A view of IIT Delhi. Credit: Bryn Pinzgauer/Flickr, CC BY 2.0
Rights15/Feb/2021
New Delhi: Scholars from marginalised communities are significantly underrepresented in PhD programmes at Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in the country and applicants from these communities also have a lower acceptance rate.
The Hindu in a three-part series, flies in the face of the common defence put forward by these institutes that they have fewer PhD scholars from marginalised communities due to the lack of applicants.
RTI data for 2015-2019 reveals poor acceptance rate for students from marginalised communities, with 25 of 26 departments not filling OBC, SC quotas either