Resistance to progressive reforms is neither novel nor accidental

The UGC’s 2026 Equity Regulations, notified on January 13, have sparked controversy over their definition of caste-based discrimination as applying only to SC/ST/OBC communities, excluding general category students from protection. Detractors argue this creates a hierarchy of victimhood and denies grievance redressal to those outside SC/ST/OBC categories facing caste-based harassment.

Critics also contest the absence of penalties for false complaints and the lack of general category representation in Equity Committees. The regulations emerged from tragic suicides of students like Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi due to alleged discrimination, sparking conversations demanding the establishment of enforcement mechanisms with penalties for non-compliant institutions. The controversy, to me, reflects fundamentally different understandings of justice and the structural nature of discrimination.

Critics claim the regulations create “reverse discrimination” by protecting only SC/ST/OBC students while excluding general category students from caste-based discrimination provisions. They argue this violates constitutional equality, creates presumptions of

guilt, and lacks safeguards against false complaints. However, this criticism misunderstands power and historical oppression. India’s caste-divide history requires targeted rather than neutral protection.

The regulations respond to 98 SC/ST/OBC student suicides between 2019 and 2021 in premier institutions and a 118 per cent increase in discrimination complaints. These are not abstract numbers but documented violence against marginalised students.

The “false complaints” concern also reveals anxieties about accountability rather than genuine procedural gaps. Supporters argue that penalties for false complaints deter genuine reporting, particularly when marginalised students already face institutional disbelief and retaliation. Historically, caste discrimination complaints were dismissed or ignored, not because they were false, but because power protected perpetrators.

Demanding safeguards against “misuse” before addressing rampant documented abuse reverses justice priorities. The crisis is under-reporting, not over-complaining. The false complaint bogey functions ideologically, deflecting attention from systemic violence towards imagined victimisation of the powerful. It treats oppressed communities’ testimony as inherently suspect, revealing exactly the prejudice these regulations combat.

The “caste-neutral” demand ignores that discrimination operates directionally through structural power. Upper-caste students may face individual incidents, but SC/ST/OBC students confront systemic exclusion embedded in institutional cultures. Removing penalties for false complaints prevents deterring genuine reporting; marginalised students already under-report due to fear of retaliation.

The controversy, unfortunately, reveals caste privilege, where dominant groups interpret the loss of unchallenged power as oppression. True equity requires acknowledging that equal treatment within unequal structures perpetuates inequality.

The regulations are imperfect but necessary interventions against entrenched discrimination that has claimed student lives. Far from being an administrative novelty or regulatory excess, the notification is a modest but necessary reaffirmation of the constitutional promise of equality by taking a firm position against discrimination in any form. It recognises that discrimination is not episodic or individual but often structural, embedded within institutional cultures and practices. Resistance to progressive reform is neither novel nor accidental. It is a recurring feature of all attempts to unsettle entrenched structures of power. Almost invariably, such resistance cloaks itself in the language of stability, neutrality, or institutional propriety. The underlying assumption is that the status quo represents equilibrium, and that any intervention to correct structural injustice risks disruption. Constitutional history, in India as elsewhere, exposes the fallacy of this claim. Stability has rarely been preserved by inertia; it has been secured through conscious departures from inherited social arrangements. The recent UGC notification must be read within this broader constitutional and historical context.

The Indian Constitution does not conceptualise equality as a passive or purely formal guarantee. Articles 14, 15, and 16 together articulate a vision of substantive equality — one that obliges the State to intervene where historical disadvantage and systemic exclusion persist. The prohibition of discrimination is accompanied by a positive duty to dismantle its enabling conditions. This is evident not only in the text of the Constitution but also in its interpretive trajectory, from early affirmative action jurisprudence to more recent recognitions of indirect and institutional discrimination.

Institutions of higher education occupy a distinctive position within this constitutional framework. Universities are spaces of learning, yes, but they are also sites where social hierarchies are reproduced or challenged.  Access to education, the teaching-learning atmosphere, academic evaluation, campus culture, and social support and grievance redressal mechanisms all shape the life chances of students and faculty, particularly those from historically marginalised communities. To imagine universities as neutral arenas untouched by social power is to deny social reality itself.

It is precisely this denial that underpins much of the opposition to the UGC notification. Critics either question the very existence of discrimination on campuses or invoke institutional autonomy as a self-justifying principle. Both arguments are deeply flawed. The persistence of caste, gender, and disability-based exclusion in higher education is well documented, whether in enrolment patterns, faculty representation, or everyday experiences of humiliation and invisibilisation. To deny this is not to defend autonomy, but to normalise inequality. Equally untenable is the invocation of autonomy divorced from constitutional accountability. Autonomy is not an end in itself; it is a means to enable institutions to pursue academic excellence and social responsibility. The Constitution does not recognise islands of authority immune from its normative force. Universities, like all public institutions, derive their legitimacy from their alignment with constitutional values. When autonomy is deployed to resist mechanisms of accountability aimed at ensuring equality and dignity, it ceases to be a democratic principle and becomes a protective cover for privilege.

It is worth recalling that many of the constitutional measures now regarded as foundational, such as anti-untouchability provisions, labour protections, and affirmative action and reservations, were once derided as divisive or destabilising. History has repeatedly shown that what unsettles entrenched advantage often strengthens democratic legitimacy. The real threat to social cohesion lies in the refusal to acknowledge injustice, not in corrective reform.

The Equity Committees envisaged by the UGC are neither punitive nor prescriptive. Their purpose is to institutionalise attention to discrimination, create accessible forums for redress, and foster genuinely inclusive environments. In that sense, they represent an evolutionary, not revolutionary, step - one that aligns higher education with the Constitution’s transformative ambition.

A society that aspires to move forward must resist the temptation to romanticise inherited arrangements as natural or benign. Constitutionalism is not about preserving comfort; it is about pursuing justice, and it remains a work in progress. The UGC notification, viewed in this light, is not an intrusion into academic life but a reminder that education, like democracy itself, must be constantly reimagined in the light of equality, dignity, and human worth.

Prof. Manoj Kumar Jha Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha) Rashtriya Janata Dal; views are personal