Rewriting inclusion on campus

The Supreme Court of India stayed the University Grants Commission (Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions) Regulations, 2026 and breathed life into the repealed 2012 Regulations. The 2012 Regulations, which will remain in operation until further notice, contain statutory directives for inclusion in higher education. They neither penalise the government and the educational institutions for failing to fulfil these requirements nor do they generate rights for the students.

In this context, priming the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan (VBSA) Bill, 2025, to enhance inclusion in higher education seems like a long-term solution. Currently, a 31-member Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) is reviewing the Bill. The VBSA Bill aims to repeal the University Grants Commission (UGC) Act to revamp the higher education sector in the country. After its review, the JPC may suggest changes for the government to introduce to the Bill, and subsequently, it may be placed in Parliament for a debate.

Caste-based discrimination and mental health issues disproportionately affect students from equity-deserving caste groups in higher education. To prevent these from occurring, what changes should the JPC suggest to the government?

In Sukdeb Saha v. State of Andhra Pradesh (2025), the Supreme Court observed that the right to mental health flows from the right to life. But a rights-based approach alone cannot address mental health issues faced by students from vulnerable caste groups. Rights, by nature, are confrontational. If students must confront violators to secure their right to mental health, any regulatory bill has already failed. What the students need is a change in the staff members’ attitudes and values.

The Supreme Court of India in Amit Kumar v. Union of India (2025) established a National Task Force headed by Justice Ravindra Bhat to identify the causes of student suicides in higher education, analyse the existing laws and policies, and recommend measures to improve the legal and institutional framework. That was a laudable step. But judicial orders, observations, and recommendations of a task force would not guarantee their implementation.

Unless the VBSA Bill establishes encouraging inclusion in higher education for students from equity-deserving caste groups as a positive obligation, judicial directives will remain on the books, undermining the rule of law and constitutionalism. In 2016, Vicki Jackson persuasively wrote, “this threat to constitutionalism can arguably be mitigated through the form
of social welfare provisions that delink government
duties from justiciable individual rights.”

For inclusion to thrive in India’s higher education institutions, judicial declarations need to be combined with adding non-rights-generating legislative measures and implementational priority by the executive, once and if the Bill is enforced.

The moral leadership mandate

We need legislative action to strengthen the VBSA Bill’s mandate of moral leadership. Clause 4(c) of the Bill aims to provide the educational system with ‘intellectual and moral leadership’. Inclusion is, essentially, a moral obligation. Not all of its aspects fit the rights-obligations dichotomy. Discriminatory behaviour by staff members and its negative effect can be subtle. For example, the selection of one student over another for a cultural event or a mentorship might depend on the students’ caste. Such conduct does not constitute a legal wrong under existing law.

Inclusion cannot flourish unless attitudinal and valuational changes are formally adopted by educational institutions and their staff members, and are reiterated to gradually embed them within the institutional culture.

The VBSA Bill is an opportunity to turn moral obligations into positive interventions. It must clearly provide that the Regulatory Commission (i.e, the primary regulatory commission that will replace the UGC through the Bill) and the Regulatory Council (i.e, one of the three councils that the Bill proposes to establish) are obligated to immediately formalise the adoption of inclusion-encouraging attitudes and values in higher education for all students, particularly the ones from equity-deserving groups based on caste, gender, sex, religion, disability status, and so on, to promote their learning and employment outcomes. The provision would connect attitudes and values with the intrinsic and instrumental aims of higher education.

This should be added as a mandatory, broad obligation in the Bill. The provision should also specify learning and employment as its intended outcomes. A more detailed mandate should be created and executed through subordinate legislation (which may or may not include penalties and even rights). A focused, systemic endorsement of inclusion must be integral to the moral leadership mandate. This structural shift would promote constitutionalism and the rule of law.

The writer is an assistant professor at O P Jindal Global University

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)