UGC Equity Regulations Protests and The Myth of Upper-Caste Victimhood
Mohammad Ali | 28 January 2026 | Outlook
The University Grants Commission (UGC) has introduced the Equity Regulations to address caste-based discrimination faced by students from reserved categories in higher education institutions (HEIs). While discrimination has been constitutionally prohibited since 1950, it remained strikingly absent from formal education policy for decades.
As sociologist Satish Deshpande has pointed out, until the 2010s—more than sixty years after the Constitution guaranteed Indians the right to live free from discrimination—no national education policy document even acknowledged discrimination in the sense the 2026 Regulations now do. In that sense, these regulations mark a historic break…