Following the death by suicide of two Scheduled Castes (SC) students at IIT-Delhi, a campus-wide survey on caste discrimination was circulated by the Board for Student Publications (BSP) earlier this week, which was withdrawn after a few hours, reports The Indian Express.
Students alleged that the survey had “irrelevant” and “insensitive” questions.
Earlier this month, Anil Kumar a student studying B.Tech in Mathematics and Computing Department had died by suicide. From the same department, another student named Ayush Ashna had also died by suicide in July.
Speaking anonymously, a student cited a survey question about the institute’s reservation policy to which students had to choose among the following responses: support its current form, replace with a new policy completely based on economic conditions, reservations should be abolished, or prefer not to answer.
“Why would someone put the last option in the survey… what is so problematic to speak about it openly?” the student asked.
A question in the survey stated, as IE reports, “Suppose you’re hanging out with your peers in your hostel common room and someone makes a comment that a person from the reserved category ‘had it easier’ or something similar. How common is this in your peer group?”
Meanwhile speaking to IE, SC/ST cell liaison officer at IIT-Delhi, Pravin Ingole said that the SC/ST call is looking into the matter and the institute will be releasing a survey along with the BSP through official channels soon.”
Meanwhile, a student head of the BSP said that they had floated the survey earlier this week to understand caste-based discrimination on campus.
“However, it has been temporarily withdrawn due to certain complaints from the institute’s SC/ST Cell. The matter has been resolved internally and BSP is currently engaging with the SC/ST cell to plan a new survey which will be released in the near future,” the person said on condition of anonymity.