Dharmendra Pradhan Must Own the UGC Equity Rules
The University Grants Commission’s new “Promotion of Equity” regulations were projected as a corrective step to address caste discrimination on Indian campuses. Instead, they have exposed a far more uncomfortable truth about how the Indian state now defines equality. The controversy is not about whether caste discrimination exists. It does. The controversy is about who the system believes is even allowed to complain about it.
At the heart of the new UGC rules is a deeply flawed assumption. The framework recognises caste-based discrimination almost exclusively through the identities of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, and other notified categories. In doing so, it quietly but decisively sidelines one inconvenient reality: caste abuse is not something that only one set of Indians experiences.
Under these regulations, caste discrimination is no longer treated as a wrongful act defined by behaviour. It is treated as a condition defined by birth category. If you belong to an approved social group, the system presumes vulnerability. If you do not, the system offers silence.
This is where the policy collapses under its own moral weight. Caste-based abuse does not magically cease to exist when the target is from the General Category. Slurs, social exclusion, classroom hostility, administrative targeting, and peer harassment do not lose their sting because the victim’s caste does not fit an officially sanctioned list. Harm does not change character based on who receives it.
By refusing to explicitly recognise caste discrimination against General Category individuals, the UGC has replaced justice with classification. It has chosen identity over conduct. The question is no longer “Was caste used to demean, isolate, or punish?” The question has become “Is the complainant from the right category?” That is not equity. That is institutional bias.
This approach also collides head-on with the Constitution’s promise of equality before law. Article 14 does not recognise selective victims. It does not permit regulators to pre-approve who qualifies for protection and who does not. When a regulator decides in advance that some citizens’ grievances are structurally legitimate while others are structurally suspect, it abandons neutrality altogether.
The real-world consequences of this design choice are serious. A General Category student facing repeated caste slurs or social ostracism has no clear institutional pathway under these rules. Their experience is not denied outright, but it is rendered invisible. In a system obsessed with documentation and compliance, what is not recognised on paper does not exist in practice.
This is not a minor drafting oversight. It is a philosophical position embedded into regulation. And that brings responsibility squarely to the top.
The UGC does not operate in a vacuum. It functions under the Ministry of Education. Which means the buck stops with Dharmendra Pradhan. The convenient fiction of “regulatory autonomy” cannot be invoked only when policies attract criticism. Ministers are quick to claim credit for reforms. They cannot disappear when those reforms reveal structural bias.
What makes the situation worse is silence. There has been no clear acknowledgement of this asymmetry. No clarification. No commitment to review. No explanation of why caste discrimination is being treated as a one-directional phenomenon in a society far more complex than that narrative allows.
At this point, the Minister has only two intellectually honest options. He can amend the rules to make caste discrimination complainant-neutral and behaviour-based, ensuring that abuse is punished regardless of who suffers it. Or he can publicly defend the idea that only certain castes can be victims of caste discrimination and accept responsibility for that position.
What is not acceptable is pretending this flaw does not exist.
Equity built on exclusion is not progress. It is prejudice dressed up as policy. If the government truly believes discrimination is wrong, it must be wrong for everyone. Anything less is not social justice. It is selective recognition, enforced by the state.
