A qualified faculty member of the Indian Institute of Technology- Madras has resigned, alleging caste discrimination.
Vipin Pudiyath Veetil, an assistant professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, sent out the mail, alleging that he had been discriminated because of his caste ever since he joined the institute in 2019.
His mail to other faculty members was widely circulated on social media, on Thursday.
“The discrimination came from individuals in positions of power irrespective of their claimed political affiliations and gender,” he wrote.
He said, he was leaving the IIT for another institution, and that because of this he would “pursue appropriate actions to address the matter”.
In his mail, he suggested that the institute constitute a committee to study the experience of Scheduled Caste and Other Backward Class faculty members.
He also suggested that the committee should have SC/ST commission, OBC commission and psychologists.
“Societies progress one small step at a time, or do they?” those who were discriminated might benefit by filing complaints with the committee at the institute and by moving courts. He ended his mail with a rhetoric.
According to the institute website, Mr. Veetil, a post-doctoral faculty member in the Department of Economics, completed his schooling in China and bachelor’s in economics at Hindu College, Delhi University. He has spent time in institutions in Europe and then earned his Ph.D. at George Mason University in the U.S.
He has published several papers in peer-reviewed journals and three are awaiting release. In 2020, he also co-authored an analysis of the economic cost of the COVID-19 lockdown across the world.
While the institute refrained from talking to the media, ChintaBAR, a students organization on the campus, has taken to social media, alleging that the IITs have been in the news recently for caste discrimination against students and persistent violation of reservation norms in admission to Ph.D. programmes.
ChintaBAR called for an inquiry into the resignation of Mr. Veetil and has also been demanding functional Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe and Other Backward Class cells in the institute to expand the scope of the grievance redress mechanism to cover discrimination in the departments.
Neither Mr. Veetil nor the institute official in charge of the grievance redress mechanism responded to messages or calls. The head of the Department of Economics, Jyotirmaya Tripathy, said it would be improper on his part to comment on the issue.
As per the emerging news reports, the Indian Institute of Technology Madras has said, it had nothing to say about the resignation of a faculty member from the Humanities and Social Sciences department.
The institute said in a release “Institute has no comments on this email. Any complaint received by the Institute from employees and students is attended to promptly through the established process of redressing grievances.”
- News Deskhttps://thekashmiriyat.co.uk/author/kashmiriyat/
- News Deskhttps://thekashmiriyat.co.uk/author/kashmiriyat/
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