Why is it so difficult to guard against social discrimination? Higher education institutions, which should be bastions of equality and nurturers of social cohesion, seem unable to prevent student suicides caused often by open or subtle discrimination against vulnerable groups. Academic stress can also be a cause, as the National Task Force earlier appointed by the Supreme Court found. In many cases, the two causes are linked. Guidelines directing institutions to be inclusive, responsive and accountable through various cells to ensure equity and sexual justice are not lacking. The NTF discovered, however, that their implementation was often absent or imperfect, bound up with the operations of social power. In 15 Indian Institutes of Technology that pride themselves on excellence, 40 students committed suicide since July 2023, when the Union education ministry had issued guidelines to HEIs to ensure their students’ mental and emotional well-being. Between 2021 and 2025, 67 students died by suicide in the IITs. The NTF reported that over 13,000 students in HEIs had committed suicide in 2022 according to National Crime Records Bureau data.

Now, the Supreme Court has had to stay the new University Grants Commission (Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions) Regulations, 2026 meant to prevent caste discrimination. Students from the non-reserved or ‘general’ category are protesting that they are being excluded from the institutional protection offered by these regulations. That is, the UGC’s regulations are exclusionary: they can be used against non-reserved students. This turn of affairs cannot please the Union government: protests from young people from the ‘general’ category dent its image as concerned authority and promoter of equality. The Supreme Court was sitting on petitions challenging these regulations and found the regulations’ language vague and open to misuse; they would have to be examined by an expert committee. The court also pointed out the anomaly of having one regulation focused on caste-based discrimination only, that is, which perpetrated against scheduled caste, scheduled tribe or other backward classes students, and another militating against discrimination of all kinds. This last provision was already present in the UGC’s 2012 regulations.

It is just and fair that the Supreme Court should want ambiguities and anomalies to be ironed out for otherwise no regulation can be effective. But why should the UGC, with its declared aim of securing equity, produce confusing and potentially divisive regulations? There seems to be a fundamental flaw at work whenever institutions and the State try to address social discrimination. In fact, there was no official mention of ‘discrimination’ in the contemporary sense until as late as 2010 — after Independence, the effort to bring society together created a blindness towards inequality, labelled ‘diversity’ and fate-ordained ‘backwardness’. That seems to be a habit difficult to overcome. But while the Supreme Court rightly stayed a socially divisive, confusing set of regulations, the core issue — the suicides of a staggering number of students because of social discrimination — remains tragically unchanged. This is untenable and must be redressed.