Editorial 1: IITs need to make science empathetic and inclusive
Context:
- The IITs are in the news again but for the wrong reasons. A spate of suicides and the media attention that followed has given us an inside view of the social behaviour and anxieties within the IIT student community.
Getting into the IITs
- Let us begin with JEE Advanced 2022, the IIT entrance exam. The cut-off for admission for general category candidates was 55 (out of 320 marks), while for SC candidates, it was 28. The median score of eligible SC candidates was only 44.
- A lot of analysis has happened about how to address this gap — both in terms of boosting SC student capabilities and sensitising non-SC students. This is notwithstanding the fact that JEE Advanced is a poorly designed exam.
Why there is such disparity among students from different social strata
- But the more important question is why should there be such disparity among students from different social strata 75 years after independence. Why are SC students not doing better? There are many cultural reasons and some material ones.
- The Census 2011 data for Maharashtra tells us that 76 per cent of the general (non-SC/ST) urban population had latrines at home in comparison to 57 per cent of SC families.
- The fraction of SC households with a scooter was 14 per cent while that for the general category it was 24 per cent. This inequality persists in other basic amenities as well.
- Thus, reaching school or college or even finding time for it is harder for SC students. But this inequality is not only about social class. Access to water within premises was 41 per cent for rural households and 74 per cent for urban households.
Impact of the differences
- Studying at the IITs can be extremely stressful, even more so for SC or ST students. The obvious question is: What is to be done? The IITs have responded with a string of measures — from strengthening existing gender and caste cells to improving student counselling.
- Can more be done? In this connection, the Chief Justice of India had exhorted the institution to focus not only on excellence but also “to end discrimination and nurture empathy”.
Making Education more Empathetic
- For students, such a pedagogy of interdisciplinary field work brings a shared experience of visiting the material realities of their society and engaging in an open and honest discussion about its problems.
- This will help students to develop mutual respect, empathy and a collective understanding of how the state and the market work. Such a constructive engagement by the university can make higher education empathetic. Diversity is important in this scheme since only a diverse student and faculty body will be able to uncover and assimilate the facts and design more effective and sustainable solutions.
- More equitable societies will produce better professionals and citizens and a diverse set of role models!
The Issues
- Sadly, we are not a normal society. Higher education in India operates in an inequitable manner.
- Still, the above modus operandi can easily change for the IITs. For IIT Bombay, the communities in the surrounding districts of Palghar, Thane and Nasik offer a variety of problem areas for both research and academics.
- From cooking energy to public transport, small enterprises to pollution, there are concrete problems of all sizes and difficulty levels for students and faculty members to grapple with.
- Faculty members can work with district administrations to address these and involve both IIT and local college students. This will prepare an ecosystem of higher education that satisfies its institutional as well as cultural roles.
Way Forward
- Great problems beset us — pollution, public health, dysfunctional public transport and extreme water stress, to name a few. These problems require the sustained engagement of the smartest people and the most innovative companies and enterprises. Our elite institutions have failed to convert our problems into opportunities and solutions.
- Sustainability is now the core concern of state agencies and national and international companies.
- They need a science which is free, a science which probes and explores all nooks and crannies of knowledge and society. It is the training in this science of empathy and diversity that the students should now demand from their professors.
- Only when Indian science turns more democratic will the university become more empathetic and the society more equal and prosperous.
Editorial 2: SC hearing pleas on same sex couples’ right to marry: What is civil union, how is it different from marriage
Context:
- A five-judge bench of the Supreme Court, headed by the Chief Justice of India, recently began hearing a batch of petitions seeking legal recognition of same sex marriage.
Introduction
- While the Centre, through Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, contested the maintainability of the petitions, and also the judiciary’s right to confer legal recognition on the “socio-legal institution” of marriage, the CJI clarified that the hearing’s scope would be limited to developing a notion of a “civil union” that finds legal recognition under the Special Marriage Act.
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Civil Union
- A “civil union” refers to the legal status that allows same-sex couples specific rights and responsibilities normally conferred upon married couples.
- Although a civil union resembles a marriage and brings with it employment, inheritance, property, and parental rights, there are some differences between the two.
How is a civil union different from marriage?
- In the year 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) legalised same-sex marriages across the nation with its landmark ruling in “Obergefell v. Hodges”.
What other countries allow civil unions?
- The United States is just one of the countries that allows same sex unions.
- Before 2009, the year that Sweden legalised same sex marriages, LGBTQ couples there could apply for civil unions and enjoy benefits such as the right to adopt. Similarly, from 1993, couples in Norway enjoyed the right to enter into civil unions, which gave way to a new law 15 years later, allowing such couples to marry, adopt and undergo state-sponsored artificial insemination.
- In Austria, same-sex couples could form civil partnerships between the years 2010-2017. However, this changed with a court ruling that deemed civil unions discriminatory in January 2019, when such marriages were legalised.
- Prior to the 2015 ruling, a majority of the US states had civil union laws that allowed same-sex couples to marry, without providing them formal recognition of the same.
- A big difference between civil unions and marriages was that the former was recognised solely by issuing states and not by federal law. This created a situation where such couples could not enjoy the benefits of being in a civil union, uniformly, across all states. Since the US had a system where states had to determine their own marriage laws, this disparity of recognition existed.
- In the wake of the legalisation of same sex marriages, several civil unions were converted into marriages.