IIT-B Caste Row Deepens General Category Anger With Modi Government
The death of IIT Bombay student Sahil Wakode on September 18 is first and foremost a tragedy that deserves a thorough investigation. Wakode, a second-year BTech student, was allegedly found using a smartphone and ChatGPT during a mid-semester examination. Professor Suryanarayana Doolla, popularly referred to as Prof Surya in the discussion surrounding the case, was involved in the examination process. Hours later, Wakode died by suicide. His family subsequently alleged caste-based harassment, Mumbai Police registered a case that included provisions of the SC/ST Act, students launched protests, and Prof Doolla was eventually removed from his administrative position as Dean while continuing as a faculty member. The circumstances surrounding the death and the allegations against the professor remain under investigation.
Yet this controversy has exploded far beyond IIT Bombay because it has arrived at a particularly sensitive moment. For many General Category Indians, the IIT-B row is not the beginning of their grievance with the Modi government’s handling of caste-related policy. It comes only months after the furious controversy surrounding the UGC Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions Regulations, 2026. Those rules had already created fears that the institutional balance between protecting victims of genuine caste discrimination and protecting people from unsubstantiated accusations was moving too far in one direction. IIT-B has now landed directly on that still-open wound.
The UGC Rules Had Already Shaken General Category Confidence
The UGC regulations notified in January became controversial because their definition of caste-based discrimination specifically covered discrimination against Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes. Petitioners from the General Category questioned why caste-based discrimination against them did not receive the same recognition and also raised concerns that the final framework lacked an adequate mechanism against false complaints. The Supreme Court intervened on January 29, keeping the regulations in abeyance after observing that parts of the framework were prima facie ambiguous and that the possibility of misuse could not be ruled out.
That was not a minor political disagreement. The regulations triggered protests, litigation and a wider debate about whether equity could itself become unequal if procedural safeguards were badly designed. In August, the Union government told the Supreme Court that the regulations were being reconsidered. For many General Category critics, therefore, the lesson from the UGC controversy was that their concerns had required protests and judicial intervention before they were treated seriously. That resentment had not disappeared when the IIT-B case erupted.
IIT-B Looked Like the Fear Behind Those Protests Coming Alive
The disturbing part of the IIT Bombay controversy is the sequence. Prof Doolla’s colleagues say he was discharging his examination duties under Senate-approved academic procedures when Wakode was found with an unauthorised smartphone during the examination. After the student’s death, however, allegations of caste harassment emerged, an FIR was registered including provisions of the SC/ST Act, protests escalated, and Doolla was removed from the deanship before investigators had established culpability.
For General Category critics already unsettled by the UGC regulations, this sequence touched precisely the nerve they had been warning about. A caste allegation had activated serious legal machinery, campus mobilisation had followed, and an accused professor had already suffered an administrative consequence while the underlying allegations remained disputed. That does not mean a family alleging caste discrimination should be denied an investigation. It means due process must matter just as much before guilt is established as accountability matters after wrongdoing is proved.
Support for Prof Surya Has Made the Question Harder to Ignore
What makes the case particularly significant is that Prof Surya has not been defended by a tiny circle of sympathisers. IIT Bombay’s Faculty Forum came out strongly in his support, and large numbers of faculty participated in a peace march carrying messages questioning why consequences were arriving before evidence had established wrongdoing. Faculty forums at IIT Delhi and IIT Madras subsequently expressed solidarity with Doolla as well, turning what began as a campus dispute into a much wider concern within India’s premier technical institutions about academic integrity and due process.
Current and former IIT Bombay students who worked with Doolla in the Power Engineering Laboratory have also defended his character and mentoring record. More strikingly, a close friend of Wakode publicly said he did not believe casteism explained what happened, while other friends reportedly said they had not witnessed caste discrimination around Sahil and believed academic pressure and mental-health questions also deserved attention. These statements do not disprove the family’s allegations, but they demonstrate why an investigation, rather than instant institutional judgment, is essential.
For those already angry after the UGC controversy, the optics are therefore deeply troubling. An SC/ST Act case has been registered, Prof Surya has lost an administrative position, yet fellow academics, former students and even people close to the deceased are publicly challenging the narrative being built around him. The political anger comes from the belief that the system appears capable of moving extremely quickly against an accused person while the evidence needed to settle the accusation is still being gathered.
But IIT-B Also Exposes a Much Deeper Failure of Reservation Policy
There is another uncomfortable question that India repeatedly avoids. Reservation can legitimately allow students to enter the same institution through materially different admission thresholds. That is the mechanism through which representation and social opportunity are expanded. But after admission, the policy largely behaves as though the academic-preparedness gap that may have existed during entrance suddenly disappears.
It does not. Mathematics does not become easier because somebody entered through reservation. Engineering problems do not change according to category. The examination hall ultimately expects students sitting beside one another to meet the academic demands of one of the world’s most competitive technical education systems. Reservation may bridge an admission threshold, but it cannot automatically bridge years of difference in schooling, coaching, exposure or academic preparation.
That is where India’s reservation model deserves far more introspection than it currently receives. We obsess about who gets the IIT seat, but spend far too little energy asking what happens to a student after he gets it.
The Small Fish in a Very Big Pond
Educational psychology already recognises what is known as the Big-Fish-Little-Pond Effect. Research involving more than 1.2 million students has found that being surrounded by substantially higher-achieving peers can negatively affect a student’s academic self-concept. A student does not judge his capabilities in isolation. He constantly measures himself against the people sitting around him.
Now place that psychological effect inside the reservation debate. A student who arrives at an IIT with a materially weaker academic foundation than many classmates may suddenly discover that the standards by which he previously measured himself have disappeared. People around him may solve problems faster, absorb material more easily or consistently score better. He can begin feeling that he does not belong, even though the state has legally and deliberately created the opportunity for him to be there. The pressure to demonstrate that he deserves his place can become enormous, and for some struggling students the temptation to hide difficulties or seek shortcuts can grow.
That broader mechanism should be discussed without pretending that it establishes why Sahil allegedly used ChatGPT. Nobody presently has evidence to establish that causal link in his individual case. But an incident involving alleged academic malpractice followed by such a devastating outcome should force policymakers to confront the larger question of whether admission without adequate academic preparation and support can leave vulnerable students carrying pressures the reservation system itself has helped create.
Reservation Cannot Mean: Here Is Your Seat, Now Survive
If the state deliberately uses different entry thresholds to advance historically disadvantaged communities, its responsibility cannot end with handing over an admission letter. IIT policy itself already recognises that preparation can matter. JEE Advanced provides for one-year preparatory courses for certain SC, ST and PwD candidates where reserved seats remain vacant and relaxed criteria apply, specifically to prepare those candidates for the academic programmes subsequently allotted to them.
Why should that principle remain so limited? If a student needs an additional year of mathematics, physics, communication skills or engineering fundamentals before competing comfortably with classmates, giving him that year is not an insult. It may be considerably more humane than placing him immediately into an academic environment for which his previous schooling has not prepared him and then expecting him simply to survive.
India could create foundation tracks, extended first years, smaller tutorial groups, additional laboratory instruction and differentiated pacing for students who demonstrate substantial preparedness gaps. Such support need not be based blindly on caste. Academic assessment can determine who requires it, although reserved-category students entering through significantly different thresholds may naturally constitute many of the beneficiaries.
Different Starting Points May Require Different Academic Paths
There is no reason social upliftment must mean forcing every student through precisely the same academic route from the first morning on campus. A student requiring more time could take an additional year. Another could undergo an intensive foundation semester before beginning the normal engineering curriculum. Some could receive smaller-group teaching until their mathematics or science foundation reaches the level required for advanced coursework.
The objective should not be to stigmatise these students or declare them intellectually inferior. It should be to acknowledge something the current system too often refuses to acknowledge: equality of opportunity does not magically create equality of preparation. A student who has overcome weak schooling, poverty or inadequate academic exposure may require considerably more institutional support after admission. Genuine upliftment means helping that student reach the level at which he can eventually compete confidently, graduate successfully and build the professional career that reservation was intended to make possible.
Professors Cannot Be Made Responsible for a Policy Failure
This brings the argument back to Prof Surya. If India’s admission system creates classrooms containing students who may arrive with very different levels of preparation, professors cannot be expected to compensate for that systemic gap by weakening academic integrity. A struggling student deserves support. A student facing caste discrimination deserves protection. A student experiencing psychological distress deserves professional help. But examination rules still have to mean something.
The IIT Bombay Faculty Forum has maintained that Doolla was performing duties under established academic procedures when the alleged malpractice was identified. Faculty support from Bombay, Delhi and Madras indicates that academics themselves see a larger institutional issue in the controversy. A reservation system cannot leave a student academically overwhelmed, provide insufficient bridging support, and then create an atmosphere in which teachers fear that enforcing ordinary examination rules could expose them to professional ruin before an investigation has established misconduct.
Modi Government Is Allowing Two Grievances to Merge
This is why the IIT-B controversy has become politically more damaging than an isolated campus dispute. The UGC regulations had already generated anger over perceived asymmetry in caste protections and safeguards. The Supreme Court intervened, and the Union government later acknowledged that the framework was being reconsidered. Now IIT-B has produced another controversy involving caste law, an accused General Category professor, organised protests, institutional consequences and a fierce argument over due process.
The two episodes are legally and institutionally different, but politically they are beginning to merge into one grievance among General Category critics of the Modi government. Their complaint is increasingly that the government is extraordinarily attentive to correcting historical inequality but insufficiently attentive to unintended inequalities and procedural vulnerabilities created by the mechanisms designed to correct it.
That is why IIT-B has deepened the anger rather than created it.
Reservation Must Go Beyond Reserving the Seat
India does not help a disadvantaged student merely by ensuring that his name appears on an IIT admission list. Real social mobility comes when that student is academically prepared to thrive inside the institution, psychologically supported when he struggles, capable of graduating with confidence and equipped to compete in the professional world outside.
If reservation creates different starting points, the government must design the educational bridge necessary to close those gaps. Give students foundation programmes, additional teaching, mentoring, more time and every genuine opportunity required to succeed. At the same time, protect academic integrity and ensure that professors accused of wrongdoing receive the same commitment to due process that victims of genuine discrimination deserve from the system.
The UGC controversy had already made General Category critics question whether the Modi government understood their concerns. IIT-B has deepened that resentment because it combines the same due-process anxiety with another policy failure India has neglected for decades. Reservation gets a student through the door. A responsible education system must also ensure that he is genuinely prepared to survive, succeed and eventually stand as an equal inside the room.
