Battles Over Social Justice, Caste, and Neo-Liberalism: A Review of ‘The Battle for IITs: A Defense of Meritocracy’

Abstract

The Battle for IITs: a Defense of Meritocracy published in 2023, written by Rajiv Malhotra and Vijaya Viswanathan, is a new contribution to defend the crème de la crème of the Indian Institute(s) of Technology (IIT) with theoretical inconsistencies, unscientific reasoning, and a vicious bending of the reality of social and economic oppression in the Indian landscape. The bookwas launched at the International Book Fair, NewDelhi, andwas published as part of the series Snakes in the Ganga: Breaking India 2.0. The book is a controversial addition to the debate on India’s most prestigious and elite technical institutes: the Indian Institute of Technologies. Bleakly put, the authors accuse social justice missions and anti-caste narratives in the IITs as forces breaking India from its scientific pursuits and diminishing the individual liberty of citizens. The outrageous claims presented in the Battle for IITs appears at a time when 122 students have committed suicide between the period of 2014–2021 in elite engineering campuses.1 Most of these students belong to the marginalized caste groups in the Hindu caste system, of Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST) andOther Backward Communities (OBC). These groups are protected under law and a percentage of seats are reserved for them in public educational institutions. The recent tragic suicide of a Dalit first year Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) student, Darshan Solanki, at IIT Bombay sparked a nationwide debate on how these institutes have turned murderous in their pursuit to divide and exclude students along gender and caste-lines, serving as a distinct node structuring the globalized neo-liberal economy. The journal Nature recently published data secured through the Right to Information Act, on the composition of students in elite engineering institutes in India.2 The data revealed that ‘Universities in India are failing to meet government quotas for marginalized communities in India’. Further, they noted how figures drop drastically at higher academic levels. Gender disparity has been amajor point of concern when it comes to the IITs. Even after the introduction of the supernumerary quota for women students in the IITs, in the year 2018–2019, the percentage of women has remained at a mere 20% in the IITs.3 Malhotra and Viswanathan also attempt to defend the gender disparity in the IITs. They argue