Reserved quota students now outnumber General category in higher education: IIM Udaipur report

NEW DELHI: A research by a team from IIM Udaipur has found that students from Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), and Other Backward Classes (OBC) outnumber General Category students’ enrollment into higher education, a press release by academic research platform CasteFiles said.

According to the press release, fifteen years after the Ministry of Education (MoE) began publishing annual All-India Survey of Higher Education (AISHE) reports, a research team from IIM Udaipur has analysed student enrolment trends to produce one of the most exhaustive studies ever conducted on caste-wise participation in Indian higher education.

Led by Venkatramanan Krishnamurthy, faculty in Quantitative Methods and Information Systems at IIM Udaipur; Thiyagarajan Jayaraman, IT specialist and Data Research Analyst; and Prof Dina Banerjee, faculty in Organizational Behaviour and Human Resource Management at IIM Udaipur, the team at the Center for Development Policy and Management (CDPM) conducted an extensive study of 13 years of census-level AISHE data (2010-11 to 2022-23) covering 60,380 higher education institutions and 43.8 million students.

Their findings are exceptionally positive and stand in sharp contrast to the narratives frequently amplified by segments of Western academia, NGOs, and activist networks.

“This report shatters several widespread misconceptions about the social composition of students in Indian higher education”, says Prof Venkatramanan. “Contrary to the prevailing narrative, students from Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), and Other Backward Classes (OBC) overwhelmingly dominate enrolment and significantly outnumber General Category students”.

This trend is visible across all types of institutions and disciplines, including professional and technical fields. The combined share of SC/ST/OBC students in higher education rose from 43.1 per cent in 2010-11 to 60.8 per cent in 2022-23, marking a decisive shift in India’s social composition of learners. In 2023 alone, SC/ST/OBC enrolment exceeded that of the General Category by 9.5 million students, the press release said.

In clearer terms, the General Category share fell from 57 per cent in 2011 to about 39 per cent in 2023, even while including students under the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) quota.

It is therefore unsurprising that many General category students pursue higher education and work opportunities abroad, but they often continue to face caste-based stigma in Western countries. American sociologist Salvatore Babones, author of the white paper on the weaponisation of caste in America, welcomed the AISHE findings. “This paper lays out the data on access to higher education by caste category. It should be read by everyone involved in India’s caste reservation debates”, he said.

CasteFiles stated that historically, centuries of colonial exploitation left vast sections of India impoverished. Reserved quotas were conceived as a temporary corrective mechanism to address this inequity in free India. However, the rigid structure of reservations has produced a growing “creamy layer” that often displaces the more disadvantaged within the same categories.

Former Chief Justice of India B R Gavai, who retired in November 2025, has repeatedly emphasised the necessity of applying the creamy-layer principle to SC and ST categories: “If benefits go repeatedly to the same families, a class within a class emerges. Reservation must reach those who truly need it”.

Thiyagarajan, one of the authors, echoes this view. “AISHE data reveals that availability of opportunities for SC, ST, OBC students in Higher Education is not an issue anymore — it is above average. Now the focus should be to ensure that the creamy layer amongst them does not take away the opportunities of those in the lower rung”, he said.

There is currently no official definition of the creamy layer for SC/STs. Though it is defined for OBC, the criteria leave wide room for manipulation of reservation benefits. Hence, ex-CJI Gavai has urged policymakers to formally identify and exclude the ‘creamy layer’ from affirmative action benefits.

CasteFiles’ analysis of the AISHE report finds that SC/ST/OBC students constitute 62.2 per cent of enrolment in government institutions and 60 per cent in private institutions, indicating that the shift is broad-based and not confined to specific courses or geographies. The report provides detailed state-level patterns confirming this transition.

The General Category not only shows a year-on-year decline in absolute enrolment but also faces significant competition from SC/ST/OBC students who are competently acquiring general seats on merit. Claims that “upper castes dominate higher education” are empirically incorrect and have often been used to justify misleading caste-atrocity narratives, policy pressure campaigns, and academic misinformation.

Prof Dina Banerjee, Co-Head of CDPM at IIM Udaipur, highlighted the significance of these trends. “This analysis reinforces the importance of an evidence-based approach to equity and the urgent need to revisit policy frameworks in light of these new realities”, she said. (ANI)