Exploring Social Inequalities in Indian Education

India’s caste system is one of the oldest and most deeply entrenched social hierarchies in human history. While its roots are ancient, its consequences are very much a present-day reality – particularly in education. For millions of children and young adults belonging to Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), and Other Backward Classes (OBCs), the classroom is not always a place of equal opportunity. It often reflects the same inequalities that have defined Indian society for centuries. Understanding how caste shapes education – and why this matters – is essential for anyone studying social inequality in the modern world.

The caste system: a brief historical background
Caste and access to education: the core problem
The dropout crisis
Discrimination inside the classroom
Economic deprivation as a barrier to education
The underrepresentation problem in higher education
India’s constitutional response: the reservation system
Gaps in implementation
Social seclusion and its educational consequences
Where does India go from here?

The caste system: a brief historical background

The caste system in India is a hierarchical social structure rooted in Hindu religious texts. Traditionally, it divides society into four broad categories called varnas: Brahmins (priests and teachers), Kshatriyas (warriors and rulers), Vaishyas (merchants and traders), and Shudras (laborers). Outside this fourfold structure entirely were those considered “untouchables” – now officially designated as Scheduled Castes or Dalits (a word meaning “broken” or “scattered”).

Scheduled Tribes, or Adivasis, are India’s indigenous communities who also existed outside the varna system and face their own distinct forms of marginalization. The category of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) refers to the socially and educationally disadvantaged groups – primarily the lower Shudra castes – who are neither SC nor ST but still face significant systemic barriers.

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the principal architect of the Indian Constitution and himself a Dalit, captured the essence of caste exclusion vividly: he described caste as “a multi-layered tower with no staircase and no entrance.” Colonial rule further hardened these divisions. As scholars like Nicholas Dirks have argued, British administration enforced caste affiliation more rigidly, constructing a stricter hierarchy than existed previously and linking jobs and educational opportunities to caste identity.

Caste and access to education: the core problem

Education is widely recognized as the most powerful route out of poverty and social exclusion. Yet in India, the same caste logic that governs social life has historically governed access to learning. For centuries, lower-caste communities were actively denied formal education – a denial that has left a structural deficit that persists even today.

The numbers are stark. Around 37% of individuals identifying as SC or ST, and 39% of those identifying as Backward Class, have no formal education at all. Literacy among SC women stands at 48% and ST women at 40%, both significantly below the national average, as per the 2011 Census. Scheduled Castes as a whole are roughly 10 percentage points below the national literacy rate of 74%.

The dropout crisis

One of the most telling indicators of educational inequality is the dropout rate. The annual dropout rate for SCs escalated from 4.9% at the primary level to 21.8% at the secondary level during 2017-18. For STs, it went from 3.7% at the primary level to 22.3% at the secondary level. More than one in five SC and ST students who begin school simply do not complete secondary education.

A Human Rights Watch report found that nearly 60% of children who drop out of school are Dalit children. The reasons are intertwined: poverty, the need for children to contribute to household labor, lack of infrastructure in schools serving marginalized communities, and – critically – the hostile environment many lower-caste children face inside the classroom itself.

Discrimination inside the classroom

The discrimination that SC, ST, and OBC students face is not merely structural – it is direct and interpersonal. Studies have documented instances of Dalit and tribal students being asked to sit separately, eat separately, and even clean school toilets – a practice that reinforces the same occupational stigmas the caste system historically imposed. Teacher perceptions compound this: research shows teachers frequently label lower-caste children as dull or less capable, creating a self-fulfilling cycle of low expectations and poor outcomes.

These experiences are not isolated to rural or under-resourced schools. Students from SC, ST, and OBC communities face discrimination, stereotyping, and harassment at the hands of both peers and faculty on a daily basis – including in elite institutions like the IITs and central universities. The psychological toll is significant: anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem are common outcomes, and in the most extreme cases, students have died by suicide.

Economic deprivation as a barrier to education

Caste and class are deeply intertwined in India. Higher castes enjoy an average monthly per capita consumption expenditure of ₹2,413, compared to just ₹1,294 for Scheduled Castes. Poverty rates follow the same gradient: only 9% of higher-caste households are poor, versus 20% of OBCs and 30% of SCs. Wealth ownership is even more skewed – in 2013, higher-caste groups owned nearly 45% of the country’s wealth while Scheduled Castes, who make up 18% of the population, owned only 7%.

This economic deprivation directly shapes educational participation. Families below the poverty line cannot afford school fees, uniforms, books, or the opportunity cost of keeping a child in school rather than sending them to work. When IITs raised undergraduate tuition by 200% in 2016 – from ₹90,000 to ₹3 lakh annually – the impact fell hardest on marginalized students, many of whom had already cleared the entrance exam but could not afford to attend.

A particularly troubling finding from research on caste-based diminished returns shows that even when SC individuals do attain education, the economic returns are significantly weaker than for upper-caste peers. The same degree, in the same labor market, yields less wealth – because caste-based discrimination continues in hiring, wages, and professional networks.

The underrepresentation problem in higher education

The gap widens considerably at the level of higher education. The All India Survey of Higher Education for 2020-21 reveals that among the top 10 universities in the country, just three have met the 22.5% SC/ST student enrollment target, and Dalit enrollment has consistently fallen short of the constitutionally mandated 15% quota.

The faculty picture is even starker. A 2019 report revealed that 95% of faculty positions in IITs were held by individuals from upper-caste backgrounds. An RTI filed by IIT-Bombay students further showed that 24 departments had no SC faculty, 15 lacked ST representation, and nine had no OBC faculty. At the PhD level, data from the Indian Institute of Science shows that only 2.1% of admitted PhD candidates between 2016 and 2020 were from the ST category, 9% from SC, and 8% from OBC communities.

The result is an academic environment where the gatekeepers – faculty, administrators, journal editors – are overwhelmingly from dominant castes, and where the culture, norms, and expectations of institutions are built around upper-caste experiences. As sociologist Vivek Kumar of Jawaharlal Nehru University has noted, upper-caste networks dominate knowledge production itself, shaping what counts as legitimate scholarship and who gets to produce it.

India’s constitutional response: the reservation system

India’s response to caste-based educational exclusion is its reservation system – the world’s oldest affirmative action program, launched in 1950 at the time of independence. The Constitution, shaped significantly by Dr. Ambedkar’s vision, embedded protections for marginalized communities through Articles 15(4), 16(4), and 46. Article 46, as part of the Directive Principles of State Policy, explicitly directs the state to promote with special care the educational and economic interests of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

Currently, SCs receive 15% reservation in educational institutions and government jobs, STs receive 7.5%, and OBCs receive 27%, following the recommendations of the Mandal Commission in 1980. The 103rd Constitutional Amendment in 2019 added a further 10% reservation for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) within the general category.

These policies have produced measurable progress. Over the past two decades, education levels across all social groups have increased, with the educational profile of OBC young men now broadly similar to that of the general category in urban India. There has also been a sharp increase in the proportion of SC and ST young men educated beyond primary schooling.

Gaps in implementation

Yet the reservation system’s promise has not fully translated into reality. The average enrollment of SC and ST students in higher education between 2011 and 2018 was 13.45% and 4.8% respectively, even though the Constitution mandates at least 15% and 7.5%. Reserved seats go unfilled, scholarship disbursements are delayed, and the hostile campus environments described above push students out even after they gain entry.

Over five years leading up to 2023, more than 13,500 students from SC, ST, and OBC communities had dropped out from central universities. The policy framework exists; consistent and equitable implementation does not.

Beyond the classroom and the admissions process, the social exclusion of lower-caste communities shapes educational outcomes in ways that are harder to quantify but equally damaging. The International Dalit Solidarity Network notes that intolerance, prejudice, and harassment toward Dalits are equally prevalent in higher education as in society at large. Caste-based segregation – in seating, in dining, in housing – signals to marginalized students that they do not fully belong in these spaces.

This matters because education is not just a transaction of information. It is a social experience. When a student is made to feel inferior, unwelcome, or out of place, their ability to learn, persist, and thrive is directly undermined. The cycle then perpetuates itself: without educational credentials, the next generation faces the same barriers to employment, income, and social status that their parents faced.

As economist Ashwini Deshpande argues in The Grammar of Caste, caste-based discrimination in India’s economic structures is not a historical remnant but an ongoing reality that contributes to entrenched poverty and inequality among lower castes. Education, then, is not a simple escape hatch – it operates within a system that continues to discount the achievements of those at the bottom of the hierarchy.

Where does India go from here?

The challenges are not insurmountable, but they are deep. Strengthening primary and secondary infrastructure in marginalized areas, ensuring timely delivery of scholarships, training teachers for inclusive and bias-free pedagogy, filling the massive backlog of reserved faculty positions, and creating genuinely anti-discriminatory campus environments – all of these are necessary steps. Research also calls for increased public spending on education, which as a share of GDP has declined in recent years rather than expanded.

The Constitution’s promise is clear: no child’s access to education should depend on the caste they were born into. Closing the gap between that promise and lived reality remains one of India’s most pressing – and unfinished – social challenges.

What do you think? If educational institutions themselves reproduce caste hierarchies through faculty composition, peer culture, and classroom norms, can reservation in admissions alone be enough to create genuine equality? And given that even educated SC graduates face weaker economic returns than their upper-caste peers, should India’s anti-discrimination policies extend more forcefully into the private sector and labor markets?

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Table of Contents

The caste system: a brief historical background 🔗

Caste and access to education: the core problem 🔗

The dropout crisis 🔗

Discrimination inside the classroom 🔗

Economic deprivation as a barrier to education 🔗

The underrepresentation problem in higher education 🔗

India’s constitutional response: the reservation system 🔗

Gaps in implementation 🔗

Social seclusion and its educational consequences 🔗

Where does India go from here? 🔗