A huge % of reserved seats go empty, simply because there aren't enough candidates.
That should tell you where the problem is: most don't even make it all the way to higher education.
You have to first fix primary and secondary education. But to fix that, you have to first fix rural society where caste hierarchies are still dominant.
> A huge % of reserved seats go empty, simply because there aren't enough candidates.
This is an interesting point. A huge focus of Indian politics is lobbying groups from various lower caste communities asking for _more_ reservation. The fact that this point never reaches discussion, that the Indian schooling system is failing its students never makes airwaves gives me the feeling that Lower caste community leaders and politicians are _not_ interested in fixing the problem if it loses them their captive vote banks.
Rural India has serious problem in class and caste. Depressing state of things overall.
But I would note that you could have chosen a better example. This incident does not have any caste slur or anything to indicate that this was rooted in caste. Government teachers and employees power-tripping in their little fiefdoms is a common story across caste boundaries. I personally know of examples of upper caste folks facing violence in schools. One had their front teeth smashed by their teacher by "accident", but you can guess the type of environment where these accidents happen. This will also never make headlines since there is no caste angle to push.
Caste is a problem in Rural and to a smaller extent in Urban India. But you will also have to admit that our media and related political interests are hell bent on fanning the flames. The caste angle is brought into every petty bit of violence. So much that it becomes hard to believe even what may be genuine cases.
The American version of this would be race being highlighted if the victim is Black/Indigenous/Hispanic. A common reddit trope is if the victim's race isn't mentioned then they're white. If the perpetrator's race isn't mentioned then they aren't White/White-adjacent.
Scholarships spanning the whole length of education rather than reservations may be a better mechanism for improving opportunity in my opinion. It would also let you know if your scheme is working since with reservation, you just let potentially unprepared students through without fixing other prior systemic issues.
That should tell you where the problem is: most don't even make it all the way to higher education.
You have to first fix primary and secondary education. But to fix that, you have to first fix rural society where caste hierarchies are still dominant.
Do you think incidents like these are conducive to pushing scheduled castes to higher education? https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/16-year-...