Abstract
In India, university students from scheduled castes (SCs) face a number of challenges that not only prevent them from graduating but also prevent them from being strong performers in universities and upon graduation. Utilizing the framework of social capital, this article draws upon life histories, secondary interviews, and document analysis to understand the lived realities of four male Indian adolescents from different SCs who are in their third year of university studies. Although the findings support the notion that overt acts of discrimination based on a student’s caste are negligible, lower caste students have limited access to the networks that create social capital. Moreover, institutional efforts to develop or enhance student social capital are minimal. For these reasons, the article concludes that systemic reform is necessary to help students from disadvantaged backgrounds overcome less obvious forms of discrimination, so that they might succeed during college and after graduation.
Introduction
Pradeep and I sit on a bench in a small park near his hostel. He directs me to the location where we met the first time, and we return there weekly to discuss his experiences as a university student. Except for the occasional honk of a horn from a passing car, the park is quiet on this early afternoon. I ask him to reflect on what he was thinking when he arrived at the university 3 years ago. He takes a potato chip from the bag we just bought and looks off in the distance. “I wondered what would happen,” he says.
I learned that you really have to mug [study]. When I took tests at home in high school, I always got over 80, and my first test here I got a 30, and I wondered if I could do it. I kept wondering, “What will I do if I don’t succeed? What will I do if I fail the test? What will my parents and brother think?” I didn’t get depressed, or very depressed, but I kept wondering; I kept asking myself questions trying to figure it out.
As we shall elaborate, Pradeep’s concerns are typical of students who are from a lower caste in India when they first set foot on a university campus. Over an academic year, we conducted life histories of four male students who attended the same university. The university is considered among India’s strongest institutions. Because of the reservation system (affirmative action), the university must admit 15% of scheduled caste (SC) students who gain entrance (and another 7.5% of scheduled tribes). How students perform in these institutions is far from definitive. On one hand, Bagde, Epple, and Taylor (2016) find no evidence that “affirmative action policies might harm intended beneficiaries by placing them in academic situations for which they are poorly suited” (p. 1520). On the other hand, a study of an elite engineering college in India by Robles and Krishna (2012) argues that the retention rates and academic performance of the beneficiaries are lower than that of their higher caste peers. Of consequence, the sorts of jobs they get upon graduation are less prestigious and less remunerative. Our work looks at the same issue—the success of SC students at an elite postsecondary institution—but considers the topic from a different perspective.
Our intent here is to suggest that although affirmative action programs enable students to gain a foothold on a campus, the experiences they have while undergraduate students are weak. We shall employ the conceptual work of Pierre Bourdieu to advance the study’s purpose. We shall argue the lack of students’ social capital shortchanges them, both while they are on campus and looking for employment. Our purpose, then, is to identify the challenges SC students encounter at university and consider the sorts of actions that might enable them not simply to graduate from an elite institution but also to be strong performers upon graduation.
We begin by a discussion of caste and class in India and then consider the theoretical framework based on social capital. We then discuss how we have employed life history as a methodology. The data are divided into three themes, which underscore the notion of social capital as a framing experience: (a) the interplay of caste and class, (b) the strengths and limits of family and fictive kin, and (c) the creation of what we shall define as an academic culture of silence.
Understanding Caste in India
The caste system is based on the division of individuals in social groups (castes) in which the social and economic rights of each individual caste are fixed and predetermined by birth. The rights are hierarchical, based on the principle of graded inequality. The caste system is maintained and enforced through the instruments of endogamy and social ostracism (a system of social and economic penalties). The four castes are Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Shudras. Brahmins were the priests who were assigned to teaching and studying of the Vedas; Kshatriyas were the rulers and warriors who protected the people; Vaishyas were assigned the occupations of money lending, to carry on trade, and tending cattle; meanwhile, the Shudras were assigned menial tasks and tasked with serving the other three castes (Ambedkar, 1987). The ati-shudra, or the “untouchables,” fell outside the Varna system, insofar, as they were engaged in occupations that were considered socially inferior (or polluting). The castes are divided further into approximately 3,000 subcastes (jatis).
These castes are not placed on a horizontal plane that signifies different but equal status. Instead, they are on a vertical plane, different and unequal. The system is remarkable for its stratification and compartmentalization of individuals. The entitlement to economic rights, such as capital assets, employment, and education, is unequally assigned among the various castes. Economic and social rights decrease as one moves down the caste hierarchy from a higher caste to a lower caste. The types of rights that are denied vary depending on the social location of a caste within the caste hierarchy.
Like other lower castes, ati-shudra suffer from the denial of basic human rights, including civil, religious, and economic rights. Due to the stigma of untouchability, ati-shudras are considered impure and polluting. Because they are viewed as unfit for social association and interrelation with the other castes, untouchable castes have suffered from physical and social segregation for centuries. The modified forms of caste-based discrimination and intergroup inequalities still govern the socioeconomic and political lives of lower and untouchable castes in India, even though caste-based discrimination is outlawed in the Constitution of India (Thorat & Attewell, 2010; Thorat & Sabharwal, 2015).
The government of India has two approaches to improve the economic and educational status of the lower and the untouchable castes (Sabharwal, 2014). These include the following: (a) legal safeguards against untouchability-based discrimination in public spaces, violence, and atrocities; and (b) affirmative action in the form of a reservation policy. Those groups included in a list of untouchable castes are entitled to benefit from the reservation policy. The former untouchables are now more frequently called the “scheduled caste” (SC) or Dalits. Among other constitutional provisions concerning education, seats are reserved for former untouchables in public higher education institutions. The reservation policy for the SCs is also extended in spheres of political representation and access to public sector jobs. The students whose life histories we are studying belong to the SCs and benefit from the affirmative action/reservation policy to the university.
The 2012-2013 All India Survey of Higher Education indicates that SC students constitute 13.1% of the total students enrolled in higher education institutions (Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, 2015). The SCs are underrepresented in higher education, as their share in enrollment is lower than their share in population (approximately 16%). Estimating how many students have benefited directly from reservation is difficult. Weisskopf (2004) estimates that about a third of SC students enrolled in universities were pursuing higher education because of the reservation policy.
Admission to elite colleges, such as the one our students attend, is based on a national-level entrance examination. The exam has two parts: main and advanced. After the main test, a rank list, based on high school marks and the marks obtained in the main test, is prepared. Close to 1.3 million candidates appeared for the main tests in 2015. Only the top 150,000 candidates qualified to appear for the advanced test. After the advanced test, two types of rank lists are prepared. One is a common rank list, and the other is a separate category-wise rank list. In the common rank list, all qualifying candidates from all categories are given ranks. In the category-wise rank list, lists are prepared separately for SCs (and other groups), following the reservation polices of the government of India.
Cutoff marks for SC students may be low compared to open merit. Even after reducing the cutoff levels, quotas are not always filled in the absence of adequate eligible candidates from SC and other groups. Similarly, the distribution of majors is also determined by scores. The higher the entrance score, the higher the likelihood of getting a prestigious major or branch campus. Therefore, a significant share of SC students are admitted to less prestigious engineering branches. This placement, in turn, influences students’ job prospects and financial returns (Malish & Ilavarasan, 2016). Thus, the caste system is a pervasive structure that frames all social life in India, including higher education. We turn now to a theoretical frame to think through how caste defines the social experiences of Dalits when they attend university.
Employing Social Capital to Understand the Role of Caste in Indian Higher Education
“The train takes about 40 hours to get here from my town.” Pradeep explains further, When I first came here, I had never been to the city or on a train so long. My father took me. When he left, I didn’t know anyone. I didn’t cry, but I was nervous. People walked around, and they looked like they knew what to do, but I didn’t. I wasn’t comfortable. I didn’t know anything. I didn’t have any friends.
Pradeep’s concerns are common for new arrivals to any university. Most students are nervous, and they worry about fitting in with their peers. What makes Pradeep’s comments different is that he is from a caste, subcaste, and region of the country that sends very few students to such a prestigious institution. Ironically, Pradeep’s intelligence and hard work had placed him in the situation that made him nervous. The social policy of the country—a reservation (affirmative action) system that assures a number of positions for SC students at these sorts of institutions—aided his admission to the university. What seems to be lacking, however, is the creation of social capital through network formation that enables students to thrive once they have arrived on campus.
The genesis of social capital derives from the French sociologist Emile Durkheim’s initial work on suicide. Durkheim (1897/1951) first articulated the idea of anomie; the lack of ties to social institutions, argued Durkheim, made it more likely that individuals would feel anomie and, of consequence, were more likely to commit suicide. Urban life enabled higher rates of suicide than rural life because one could be anonymous in the city. The church not only facilitated a spiritual life but also brought people together, so that those who were churchgoers had fewer incidences of suicide than nonchurchgoers, and so on. Pierre Bourdieu (1973, 1986), a French Marxist sociologist, took the idea in a different direction and defined it as social capital. Interpersonal networks created resources, which individuals could employ in other areas of social life. Individuals who were rich in social capital had the potential for economic and cultural capital connections; a lack of social capital suggested people would be poor in economic and cultural capital.
We are suggesting that social capital either qualifies or disqualifies individuals and groups to achieve specific goals and objectives through the creation and elaboration of networks. As Warren, Thompson, and Saegert (2001) have observed, “social capital refers to the set of resources that inhere in relationships of trust and cooperation between people” (p. 1). The scaffolding for this position is that networks and group affiliations have benefits that result in the accumulation of social capital. We employ the word “capital” purposefully. Economic capital assists individual entrée into certain arenas. Human capital refers to the skills an individual has which make employment possible. Social capital similarly facilitates movement, but it refers to interpersonal networks that equip individuals with cultural resources that can be utilized in other areas of social life. Individuals rich in social capital have the potential to increase their economic capital. A person with little or no social capital is likely to have a harder time acquiring economic and human capital.
Examples of social capital are resources developed within a network of relationships of mutual acquaintances. A private high school in New Delhi, India, is an example of an organization that has multiple opportunities for its students to acquire social capital. Individuals participate with one another in an array of activities to help them get ready for university. Students will have coaches to train them for university entrance exams. Visits with one’s peers to cultural entities, such as museums or attendance at particular kinds of films, will be commonplace. Parents of the students most likely have attended university, and discussions about which college to attend upon graduation will occur. A student’s brothers or sisters are likely to attend university. The school will have teachers who will be versed on what students need to know for university, and they will have strategies on how best to prepare them. The summer will be geared toward learning opportunities. All these examples lend themselves to social capital development. What participants in such a school see as the norm will be absent or an exception in a low-income school where someone from a low caste is likely to attend.
In a low-income school, coaches cannot be afforded. If college preparation begins at all, it will occur in senior year when a single counselor or teacher will suggest to a student, such as Pradeep, that he and his friends should think about going to a university. Students will not know anyone in their neighborhood or family who has attended college. Summer employment will be some form of physical labor to help out the family. Visits to museums and other cultural locales will be seen as time-wasting luxuries. Classes will not cover college material, and discussions about what college is about or what professors expect from students will be absent.
We wish to emphasize that social capital is not a single act; attendance at one high-brow cultural event may benefit an individual, but for the accumulation of social capital to occur, individuals have to be enmeshed with others over a long-term horizon for a network to develop and be maintained. In poor schools, where an activity takes place that is an exception to the norm, the act may be useful, but it is not an example of social capital development.
Group membership has social responsibilities that deliver benefits to the individual, such as contacts that are able to be called upon in the future (Tierney, 2006). An individual will have particular obligations, such as a dress code and norms of behavior, but the symbolic payoff for the individual is the opportunity to be in an exclusive network that increases his or her social capital. Networks also have the potential to be numerous and overlapping. Individuals who are in a private club may have attended similar universities, be from the same upper caste, and frequent the same restaurants and cultural events. Overlapping networks strengthen and extend the social capital of the persons who are involved. The creation of these sorts of networks and the concomitant development of social capital is a key explanation of not only how inequality functions but also how it is maintained. Those who are able to participate in the networks acquire greater resources, and those who do not, do without.
From one vantage point, social capital might appear to be little more than a tautology: The wealthy stay wealthy because they are wealthy. Those who are successful today will be successful tomorrow. Bourdieu would argue that social capital explains how society reproduces class inequity. What troubles us with Bourdieu’s analysis is the seeming rejection of any possibility for human agency. Presumably, from a strictly structural perspective, individuals such as Pradeep and his friends do not have the potential to change the structures in which they reside. To be sure, one or another individual might succeed, but structural reform that enables those from a lower caste to find economic parity with those from other castes is impossible.
We reject such a deterministic perspective. Indeed, as we discuss, one purpose of this article is to highlight the struggles individuals face and how they challenge inequitable structures. Our focus, then, is to understand how these networks and structures function in real and symbolic manners as distinct entities. To understand how one might create the conditions for empowerment, however, we first need a methodological design that enables us to understand the lived realities of students, and to this we now turn.
Method: Understanding the Lives of SC College Students
“I didn’t really think about caste until I got here,” says Pradeep one afternoon.
It’s not very important where I come from, I think. My father is from the Dhobi [sub] caste [washer men]. His father did it, and he did it, but now he owns a shop. That’s why he thinks education is important. But it’s not like I can speak a lot about caste, because I didn’t think about it until recently.
Pradeep’s story is a singular version of reality. Denzin’s (1989) definition of life history as an “account of a life based on interviews and conversations” (p. 48) helps delineate what we did. What does one make of a person’s life story? And, how might it be used as other than an interesting story? In some of our previous work, we have employed a similar framework utilized here, but never with regard to this particular topic: the life experiences of SC students at a prestigious university in India.
The study affords us the opportunity to consider the unique subject positions of the interviewees: four male Indian adolescents from SCs who are currently in their third year of university. Inevitably, the standpoints of the authors, as well as the methods employed to develop the data, also require explanation.
Thomas Cottle (1991) offered a useful set of life stories about a family preparing for college. Life histories about college students and teachers have also been useful in helping us frame our work (Muchmore, 2002; Stieha, 2010; Tierney, 2009, 2014). What these sorts of interviews have done is provide enough description so that readers might understand a part of one’s life and then try to see whether various theoretical propositions make sense or not. In general, however, there is a paucity of life stories about the young, especially about the experiences of the young in schools and universities in locations other than the United States and Europe. Indeed, when life histories and stories have been undertaken in the developing world or of indigenous cultures, one might argue that they have often been done to portray an “exotic” culture in ways that circumscribe identity. Analyses, then, of adolescents in a nation such as India, where the individuals attend elite postsecondary institutions, offer a different way to think about universities, identity, and how to think about one’s life.
Haglund (2004) has argued that life stories are particularly well suited for questions regarding adolescent issues and that adolescents have the necessary skills, “including recall, insight, interest, and attention span,” to participate in making a life history (p. 1312). Furthermore, as the life stories here demonstrate, the young have the ability to be deeply reflective about their lives. Our purpose is not to collapse their lives into a singular framework as if all students from a particular caste view the world in the same manner, but rather, we tried to understand whether any cross-cutting themes exist across similar students at the same institution.
We mentioned above that the subject positions of life historians come into play in a way that frequently does not enter into more positivist methodologies. Our work here was particularly unique and useful given our collective identities. Three researchers conducted the life histories over the time frame of an academic year. During the fall term, we developed a common protocol. We subsequently requested and received permission from our own institution and the institution the students attended. We met with the individuals as a group to solicit their involvement and, once they agreed, spoke with them in smaller groups until we decided who would work with a particular individual.
Two of us are Indian, and one is American. Two of us are men, and one is a woman. One of us comes from an SC, one does not, and one person is a Christian and casteless. Our ages vary considerably; one of us also attended the institution under investigation as a graduate student. Each of these points strengthened the data collection and analysis.
One often writes about the triangulation of data, and, of course, we followed standard procedures. Formal and informal interviews, focus groups, formal document analysis—as well as informal interactions via Facebook, texting, email, and the like—were utilized throughout the research project. We met each individual weekly during the course of spring term for at least 1 hr each and frequently for much longer. Each student was interviewed no less than 15 times and no more than 20 for a period of not less than one half hour. We also met with our interviewees off-site over a meal or coffee and tea no less than twice and no more than a half dozen times. Toward the end of the project, we held a focus group with all of them that extended into a meal to review our initial findings and solicit their input.
All four students utilized forms of social media, such as Facebook and Instagram. We explored these sorts of documents, as well as papers and exams. We also reviewed essays and vitae they composed for scholarships and/or internships. Perhaps the greatest amount of document analysis that occurred, however, was through email and texting, where we followed up on interview points and raised questions that we wished to explore at subsequent meetings.
As researchers, we also triangulated the data by way of our own analyses of what one or another of us found. Individuals often write of subject positions, and investigate how being of a particular ethnicity or gender or class situates one’s work. We agree. The strength of our work here is that, because the work is multiauthored, we were able to discuss and argue one another’s data and findings. A 20-year-old Indian male is likely to interact differently with a woman than a man. A foreigner can plead ignorance on any number of issues, so that basic understandings will be verbalized when it appears unnecessary when the interviewer is from the same country. An understanding of the local situation in terms of institution and caste lends insight that others may not have. The point, of course, is not that we were able to derive perfect data (as if that is either possible or a goal). Rather, in this project, the multiple subject positions of the authors deepened our understanding throughout the course of the project and the development of this text.
Through subsequent conversations with counselors, teachers, mothers, sisters, and friends, we also were able to deepen our understanding of what our interviewees had said. We spoke, for example, with the faculty members who started an institutional study circle to discuss issues such as caste, equity, and social justice in higher education. We also interviewed adults, such as the security guards at the hostel where the students were residing and family members of the students. In total, we had 24 secondary interviews that lasted approximately a half hour each.
In an age of instant, frequently one-way, communication—texting, Facebook, and the like—this sort of research is an opportunity for any individual, but especially adolescents, to step back and verbalize what they may be thinking about the experiences they are having or would like to have. Different methodologies have different strengths. Surely, a sample size of one is irrelevant for suggesting large-scale recommendations, but it offers another way of looking at the lives of adolescents. Hugh Mehan (1992) has usefully observed that research of this sort has the potential to insert human agency into frequently overly structural theories of social inequality such as Bourdieu’s. The life histories that follow also respond to the call by Smyth and Schorr (2009) to rethink what constitutes proof as we consider social interventions that work. A life history is one piece of in-depth data that enable researchers to understand the phenomena of the first year for a low-income, first-generation student in a manner much deeper and potentially richer than simply from a survey or short interview (Tierney & Clemens, 2012).
We originally used a protocol for posing questions, and we took notes on their answers. We used the protocol to guide our initial questions across the interviewees, but, as our conversations continued and we collected data that were common across all of them, particular topics arose unique to the individual. One individual’s father died during his first year at the university; another individual was focused in preparing for Union Public Service Commission, hoping to get into government services; and a third interviewee became aware of his caste status only when he started applying for college. When we started our project, none of them realized they had to have an internship at the end of their third year. By the time the project ended, we were taking the students shopping for their clothes as they were getting ready to enter professional offices for the first time. We have continued to stay in touch with them, and they have asked on occasion for advice about future careers and the like. Through these interviews, then, we were able to understand cross-cutting themes, but they occur and get interpreted by the participants in unique manners, based on their own social locations and histories.
We are working from the assumption that the sense there is a whole “self” that is coherent and understandable to an outside observer gives way to a more emergent notion that identity is fluid, contradictory, and multivocal. One ought not to try to reduce an individual to a singular identity—Hindu, Muslim, male, Dalit (untouchable)—insofar as individuals inhabit multiple standpoints all the time. Such a point is generally acknowledged in the literature on culture and method (Behar, 2003; Bourgois & Schonberg, 2009; Lincoln, 1997), but it is regrettably still a point of debate in the world of educational research. Hence, we are arguing that rather than unidirectional and singular, a study begins by accepting the multivocality and multidirectionality of a person’s identity. Our purpose, of course, was not to present full life histories of these four students. Rather, the data presented here largely concentrate on the educational experiences they encountered while at university. As with all qualitative work of this nature, the limitations pertain to the inability to generalize about one’s work, and the realization that we are taking a snapshot—even if that snapshot occurred over the course of an academic year—such that one cannot predict how students might respond to similar questions a year or so from now.
In what follows, we first discuss the setting, provide a description of the four students, and then consider three themes that arose from the data. The themes were not self-evident prior to our entry to the setting, but instead arose from the interviews and then our analysis of the transcriptions of the data as a research team. The transcripts were analyzed by the researchers to ensure that one’s interpretation was shared by another member. Through ongoing conversations with one another and then with the students, the themes emerged.
Data Presentation
The Setting
The institution is located in a large urban city. With more than 7,000 students, it is one of India’s best residential institutions. Teachers, staff, and students reside on the campus. The institution is surrounded by a rich historical heritage of the city and is well connected with major city centers. The longitudinal expanse of the institution is visible from a distance. The sprawling college campus is beautiful, with a green cover spread across 400 acres of land.
The academic zone is in the middle, and residences for faculty and students are located at two ends of this sprawl. Most of the residences for men are located at one end, whereas the residence for women is located at the side of the residence of faculty. Women are mostly absent from the campus, insofar as they constitute less than 10% of the total student population.
All groups converge during academic sessions in the academic zone, which has a state-of-the-art physical and academic infrastructure with spaces designed for student interaction. Academic and administrative blocks are the heart of the campus. Classrooms, tutorial rooms, and project rooms are well equipped with advanced information technology. Advanced research laboratory facilities in science and engineering are located on the ground and the first floor.
The institution has excellent faculty members with extensive experience teaching and conducting research in top Indian universities and abroad. Faculty have separate offices next to their laboratories. Most of the leading corporate and multinational companies visit the campus for recruitment. A staff club, hospital, shopping center, bank, post office, community center, stadium, and ample playing fields are all located within the campus.
Student Background
Pradeep will turn 22 during the course of our study. He is a thin, short-haired student with a beard that arrived during his first year of university. He is an average student with a grade point average (GPA) of approximately 7.2 (out of 10). He has a younger brother who he hopes attends a university; neither his mother nor father have graduated from high school. Pradeep wants to land a job that will pay him a good enough salary that he can support his parents in their old age and enable his brother to travel to Europe or the United States if he wants to study.
His friend, Rahul, is also thin with large, sad eyes that convey the challenges he faces. Rahul is 21, belongs to a very poor family and is the first in his family to attend college. Rahul’s father is a kabadi-wala (a person whose caste members collect scraps). His father collects paper, glass bottles, and plastic, going from one door to another, and then sells the items to wholesale recycling shops. Rahul lost his sister to malaria when she was in high school a few years ago. Since the death of his sister, Rahul has become very close to his mother. He dreams of getting a government job as soon as he graduates, so that he is able to support his parents. Rahul is fond of dancing and is an above average student with an 8.0 GPA.
Their friend Akshay, 19 years old, is a tall, lanky student with a carefree smile. He is an average student with a 6.0 GPA and the youngest of seven children. Akshay loves to drink buttermilk and eat butter with rotis (wheatcakes), prepared by his mother. He misses these the most during his stay in college. Akshay talks to his mother every day, often feels homesick, and goes home as often as he can. His home is closer to the institution than Rahul’s or Pradeep’s home. Akshay is the only one in his family who has made it to university. “Life of loss” is what his father believes life is without education (padhai nahi ki, tho aap bus haar ke jiyo). Akshay’s parents are not literate and have not attended school. Akshay is studying with determination to be a software engineer, and hopes to get a high-salaried job in a multinational company to help support his family.
Vivek hails from a northern state in India. At 21 years of age, he is tall and fair in complexion. He is always cool and offers a particular charm. He is studious, has a 7.5 GPA, and works very hard. Unlike his friends, he belongs to an economically secure family; they would be considered not desperately poor, but among the lower working class. His father is a government bureaucrat and holds a low administrative position in a northern state. His sister has a BEd and a master’s degree in economics. She is a teacher and married to an engineer. Vivek secured state ranks in 10th- and 12th-grade examinations and intends to work for an engineering firm.
We turn to the themes that arose from data analyses and subsequent focus groups: How caste functions at the university to inform their educational experience; how families matter; and how the academic culture of the university shapes these students’ experiences.
The Interplay of Caste and Class
Pradeep reflects on his initial arrival to campus by saying, My roommate was a Brahmin and we got along, but he was rich. I go to a movie maybe once a month and spend 100 rupees; he goes and spends 500 rupees. We also talk about different things. Even cars. When he talks about cars, they are expensive cars, and I look at cheaper ones. He talked about American movies, foreign movies, and I talked about Hindi ones.
Akshay offers a similar story: Govind. That was the name of my roommate. Very good in English and from here, unlike me. Matlab woh, thoda uska uper level hai (I mean, his level was higher than mine). His father was highly educated and also would go abroad for international travels.
Both talk about the lack of material resources they had and how their roommates helped them. Akshay notes, Govind used to help me. I did not own a computer, had not really seen one, and did not know how to work on Word or Excel. Govind helped me with [the] basics of computers and also with providing information on the courses.
Pradeep adds, “I didn’t own a laptop until I came here. I didn’t know Excel or how to make a spreadsheet or things like that. That first year I had to learn a lot because I didn’t have it.” Rahul comments that it is not only computers that are a problem: The reference books are very expensive. I am not at all able to afford them. My friends who are from general category have these books. The books that I am not able to find in the library, I usually borrow these from them and also their notes. I find their notes are better than mine.
The interviewees are keenly aware of their material shortcomings, but they attribute them more to class than caste. Vivek notes, There is no discrimination . . . but we feel more comfortable with our friends (SCs). Our tastes and interests are same . . . Thats why you could see all SCs are staying together in one wing. Its not because of discrimination. But we go to film together and sit together . . . sometime we go to Paradise (a restaurant outside campus) to eat non-veg.
“I don’t think caste is very evident here,” says Pradeep, “in the hostel or around here. We all dress the same, look the same.”
Rahul agrees by saying, “The basis of our friendship here (with my category friends) was that we face similar types of difficulties.” Vivek goes on at length about the difficulties for low-caste students, but he attributes the challenges largely to economic difficulties: SC students are mostly poor, they find difficulties in managing everyday expenses. I never heard anything about caste (during my school days). When applying for [university], I came to know about caste and its importance. I know many SC students, they don’t have the basics, how to read scientific symbols . . . simple formulas and the basics of mathematics. But we find it difficult to survive here. Since my childhood, I never come across any caste or discrimination. After reaching here and talking to SC friends . . . (I realised) there is caste, [but] I have never faced any discrimination. Here, what is important is to study. If you lag behind—be it SC or general—you will be mocked.
Pradeep mentions that he has upper caste friends: “We were going to go on a trip over the holiday to Goa [a beach town]. Six of us. It was mixed, different castes. No one said anything.” But Rahul observes that differences exist akin to Pradeep’s concerns about his initial roommates: “I went to the Student Activity Centre in the beginning when I joined college. I found that there were some activities like squash, badminton that I did not know how to play. I felt embarassed so I stopped going there.” Akshay offers a similar observation: Back home, I know caste matters, though in a different way. For example in schools, the higher caste avoid eating school lunch cooked by the untouchable caste because of the notion of pollution and purity associated with my caste. That form does not happen here, but somehow we remain aware of our caste background.
At the same time, the students do mention that caste is not entirely absent from their lives. Pradeep mentions, I think we think about it with girls, like who we want to marry. It also matters with some individuals. Like when I take the train from my home to here sometimes someone doesn’t want to sit next to me, but that doesn’t happen much.
Faculty members who started the study circle in the college noted instances of such explicit caste-based discrimination even existed at the college. One of them shared incidents of upper caste students avoiding eating food brought by their SC friends from home. They also pointed toward the segregation of students around social groups in the hostel. In terms of academic support, social identity also mattered. One professor noted, “SCs rarely approach upper-caste seniors for academic support; rather do they interact with SC seniors.” Thus, they expressed concerns over the hostel environment and peer-group learning pertaining to one’s own identity.
Rahul is acutely aware of this lack of interaction, especially academic interaction, with peers from the higher caste groups. He acknowledges the advantages of studying with them, especially the quality of study notes that they share with each other. Rahul elaborates, “I see students with high GPA (8.0, 9.0, 9.1 out of 10) are studying together in the hostel. They study fast! They share study notes and help each other in solving assigned problems.” Rahul’s friends observe the same behaviors.
Rahul shakes his head and continues, They have access to infrastructure (iPads, smart phones that support learning apps). They have access to the latest techonology (such as e-learning apps) that facilitate their learning and keeps the group informed, which in turn gets reflected in their study notes.
Rahul, who also has a high GPA of 8.0, feels that the quality of their study notes are better than his own. He has borrowed notes from them on occasion, but does not consider himself to be a part of their learning network, and is not sure whether he will ever be included. “I’m not like them,” he concludes.
Another faculty member noted, “Institutionally, students from the deprived groups are disadvantaged.” A third faculty member mentioned the placement form developed by the training and placement unit. The form requires students to mention their JEE rank, including their social category, while applying for placements. The result is that SC students are exposed to the risk of discrimination during the hiring process and the reinforcement of caste biases even when they move from the university to the world of work (Thorat & Attewell, 2010). One of the professors explained, “It may not be intentional, and changes can be easily made, but clerks in the adminsitrative section might have prepared it without overseeing its impact.”
The Strengths and Limits of Family and Fictive Kin
One observation that everyone makes pertains to how close they feel to their families. Pradeep is proud to acknowledge: My parents would say I have grown up. Whenever I went anywhere before, my father would go with me, like to a town to take a test. But now I can do it on my own. Now I can handle myself.
He goes on to acknowledge, “I talk with them every night. Maybe not my brother, but either my mom or dad or both.”
Vivek, Rahul, and Akshay make similar comments. They talk to their parents every day. They enjoy going home, even if it involves train rides of several hours. Akshay’s mom is the one “who kept telling me to study.” Rahul’s uncle paid for his education. His mother expressed pride in Rahul’s success and shared how she was acknowledged by neighbors and authorities in school. Vivek thinks of his father as his “guide” and his parents as his “strength.”
However, one’s family is frequently unable to help a new student navigate life in a big city, much less academic studies at a university. Akshay notes, “My father did not know anything. My uncle advised my father to send me to a coaching institute that prepares students for college. He told my father about reservation of seats for our social category at public universities.” Rahul states, “I did not have anyone who could guide me. I did not know which course to choose to study at college.” Pradeep was in a similar situation: “My father didn’t know about any college or university. But when I said I wanted to try, he supported me.” Rahul offers a portrait of his arrival by adding: I came to college with my uncle and father. It was their first time to [the big city]. None of us knew the way to college from the station. We were charged extra by the rickshaw driver. We did not even know that we [had] to deposit hostel fees. Thankfully, we had a distant relative from whom we borrowed 20,000 rupees and paid the fees.
The challenge, then, for these students is that their families support them but are frequently unable to offer advice about how to manage university life. The problem is compounded because they are frequently the first in their family, and perhaps the only one in their village, to go to university. As Pradeep notes, “I’m the only one in my class who came here. Most don’t go to university and they stay home.” Akshay mirrors Pradeep: “In my family, I am the only one that has made [it] to college. In the whole village, no one, not even the school teachers, are aware that this college is the best in India.” Vivek is the only one who had a leg up because a teacher connected him with an older student. Vivek acknowledges, “His advice was very helpful. He shared his books and notes with me. I used the notes for preparing for entrance exam. That helped me a lot.” But the norm is what Pradeep experienced: “A teacher told me that I should go to [a good university] because I would get good scores. There aren’t coaches or things like that in my town; we didn’t know anything, so I just studied on my own.”
The person at the university Rahul and Akshay often interact with is the security guard (Mr. Ramlal) in their hostel. Rahul notes, “We like interacting with him. He’s a kind person and he understands.” When we ask Mr. Ramlal about his views, he says, “Rahul and Akshay are respectful towards me. They always greet me; they ask if I want tea during tea time.” The boys also advise Mr. Ramlal’s son, who is in high school, about how to prepare for the university. Nevertheless, Ramlal observes that Rahul and Akshay “usually stick with students like themselves.”
To be sure, the support of one’s family plays an enormous role in the well-being of each individual. And, as with Rahul and Akshay, the students have found others with whom they can communicate. What seems to be lacking, however, is common interaction that enables network development. Pradeep notes, for example, “Figuring out about internships was confusing. None of us knew what to do and we weren’t sure who to ask.” Concerns shared by Vivek regarding his internship further supports this point. Vivek comments, Getting an internship in a good company, a core company, decides your future. We have to find these internships ourselves. We do not get any support. One has to apply himself. It is difficult for everyone, but for someone like me—whom to contact and how to apply!
He raises his hands, shakes his head, and makes a facial gesture saying he is clueless.
An Academic Culture of Silence
The challenge is not simply that students arrive to campus unprepared and unaware of what they need to do. If the campus had structures in place, or the faculty considered it their responsibility to work with students outside of class, then problems might be resolved. Instead, students are pretty much left to themselves. One day, Pradeep mentions in a matter-of-fact tone: “I don’t know any teachers here. I don’t think anyone knows my name. I’m not sure what I’d do if I had a problem—like, why would I go to a professor?” He explains that the manner in which he talks is not typical: “Classes aren’t really classes where we talk like this. You ask questions where it’s like a conversation. That’s not what a university class is.”
Rahul concurs: “I was too shy to approach the [professor]; I did not have much introduction to the campus. The first year was very tough.” He elaborates by saying, Profs know your rank and know that we are category [SC] students. The scores are what decide your level of interaction. The higher the CGPA (cumulative grade point average), the higher the interaction with the professors here, so we don’t have any interaction with profs.
Akshay and Vivek offer a similar analysis: “The professors are all here just for teaching; they will come; they will teach, and they will leave. Beyond the lecture, in the classroom, there is nothing specific faculty members will engage with,” says Akshay. Vivek adds, I feel nervous to approach teachers. We could not understand many of the lectures at first. They speak English very fast. Only the toppers can understand. But we will not ask any questions. “Why are you asking such silly questions?” the teacher may ask.
“The professor is not your friend,” offers Pradeep. “If you have high scores the professor may ask you to work with him on a project, but I do not. So they don’t know me.”
Observations by the faculty are also useful to understand the lives of these students. As one professor sympathetic to SC students noted, “Conservative professors largely belong to the upper castes. Their beliefs are rooted in the ideology of merit and against the idea of reservation.” Another added, “They tend to behave with SC students in less empathizing ways. The language of merit and the belief that we have entered into a post-casteism era is shared by many faculty here.” A third stated, “The beliefs of faculty negate the possibility of understanding the experience of SCs. And institutional policies tend to reinforce the inequities. The university does not provide a liberating environment, since we focus on the myth of merit.” Others noted that the lack of competency in the English language further pushes SCs into the margins of classrooms. They stressed that it is not simply a lack of English, but a lack of technical vocabulary that make them more vulnerable in academic settings. The coursework, reference books, and examinations all have to be taken in English. Because lecture classes are large, tutorial classes with 20 to 25 students are more favorable to disadvantaged students. However, an acute shortage of faculty members—especially in the wake of recent increases in student intake—has led to a reduction of tutorial classes.
One professor who offers courses that cover issues of caste, equality, and justice noted, “SCs in my class are reluctant to participate in discussions even when upper-caste students are active.” Others noted that, although there are efforts at an individual level to have discussions, “campus-wide conversations and discussions around such issues are mostly missing on campus.” A professor explained, as a centre of excellence, this university has located itself as an antithesis to politically vibrant universities in India. The institution has an aversion towards any issue that has a potential to be politicized, which for me indicates a deep-rooted inequitable structure of the university.
The result is that SCs are subsumed in an academic culture of silence, which is framed by an ideology of merit.
Understanding Caste and Student Identity
An important work by Kapur, Babu, and Prasad (2014), titled Defying the Odds: The Rise of Dalit Entrepreneurs, addresses the “new Dalit identity” and offers short case studies of 21 Dalit entrepreneurs. Each story is a tale of success “against all odds,” where individuals worked extraordinarily hard and became (or are on their way to becoming) wealthy. These rags-to-riches stories are certainly uplifting, particularly given the environment. Our concern with such portraits, however, is that the large swath of poor people and individuals who are SCs or scheduled tribes are not likely to benefit without structural and cultural support. What the book highlights is the extraordinary efforts some individuals are capable of putting forth, but implicit in those portraits is the notion that if we all work with equal amounts of industriousness, then we all will succeed.
As noted at the outset, the purpose of the text has been to identify the challenges SC students encounter at university to come to terms with the sort of actions that might enable them not simply to graduate from an elite institution but also to be strong performers at the university and upon graduation. What we have pointed out here is surely not the opposite of stories of hard work, grit, and determination. Nevertheless, our conclusions stand in sharp contrast, based on the data and theoretical framework we have employed. In general, the findings support the notion that overt acts of discrimination based on a student’s caste are negligible. The challenge, however, is what we referred to earlier with regard to the networks that create social capital and the relative paucity of “college knowledge” the students have when they first arrive on campus. Caste and class overlap such that students who are Dalits are also overwhelmingly poor.
Lower caste students come to campus largely bereft of social networks. Recall Pradeep’s worry that he did not know anything or anyone after his father left him at the university. No one complained of overt forms of discrimination, but they all noted how their economic shortcomings resulted in their lack of material goods—laptops and the like—and they did not know how to create spreadsheets for their homework assignments. The challenge, then, is to determine how to separate caste from class, insofar as the students’ poverty is framed by their caste.
The students also seemed to exacerbate their situation, given that they lived, because of random assignment, in their first year with students who were from an upper caste but eventually migrated to living with one another. No one mentioned caste discrimination as the rationale for leaving their roommates during their subsequent years, but they, nevertheless, ended up reinforcing caste-based isolation by choosing to room with other SC students. The rationales had little to do with prejudice and more to do with sociocultural preferences—informal topics of conversation about cars, movies, and the like—but the result was certainly not aimed at network development. Our point, of course, is not that individuals should avoid living with people who are similar to themselves, but what did not occur was network creation, which, in turn, could have been turned into human capital by way of studying with people who had advanced knowledge about academic and career-related topics.
Family played a crucial role for each individual. They each talked regularly to their parents and siblings and enjoyed going home. In an alien environment, families were an island of support even if it was only a nightly phone call. The problem, however, is that prior to going to college and during their undergraduate years, the families were largely unable to provide academic or environmental support. None of the parents had graduated from high school and continued to university. The parents certainly wanted their sons to get a degree, but they were neither able to tell them how to navigate university life, nor in a position to open doors for them.
Perhaps most troubling is the absence of adult support on campus. Students uniformly commented they knew no faculty and expected little outreach from anyone in an administrative role. The result is they acted like family with one another. They studied with each other, ate with each other, celebrated each other’s triumphs, and when one needed money to go to a movie or a cheap meal, they all contributed. The literature talks about “fictive kin” and points out how such activities enable individuals to create a family when none exists that can be beneficial. These students acted as fictive kin and formed bonds that enabled communal fellowship.
What we find worrisome is that, however hard the students are working and however extraordinary their efforts are to have made it to the elite institution, very little is being done to develop or enhance their social capital. The result is that success ends up “defying the odds” as Kapur et al.’s (2014) book suggests. Our point is if society wants to move from one of extraordinary success based on individual achievement to systemic reform where many, not just a talented tenth, will succeed, then different sorts of educational experiences need to occur on university campuses—perhaps even before students arrive. One should not assume that because discrimination is no longer overt, it has been eliminated. Indeed, the hidden culture of silence that we have portrayed here may be even harder to grasp because of its ineffable bonds. If we are to prove that Bourdieu’s determinism is incorrect, then more attention needs to be paid to the experiences of youth such as Pradeep and his friends in order to come to terms with the parameters of discrimination.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.