Access to Higher Education by Social Groups : Constraints and Suggestions

Human development is a process of enlarging the choices of all people not just for one section of the society. If some sections are excluded from the benefit of mainstream development such development process becomes unjust and inequitable. The rights to equality are enshrined in the Constitution of India, besides that Indian government both at state and central made several efforts to give equal rights to all. However, wide gap continues to exist between the goals enunciated in the Constitution, legislations, policies and plans and the ground reality of the status of some sections of people especially scheduled Caste, scheduled Tribes in India. Despite various social policies since independence, the situation of them is still not improved up to a satisfactory level due to numerous reasons. Among many areas of concern, representation of these marginalised sections in the higher education sphere is quite low and need urgent attention.Against this background the paper is prepared with the following objectives 1.To evaluate the status of SC's and ST's in the higher education in India; 2. To suggest suitable policy measures to the constraints faced by the SCs and STs in accessing higher education. The present paper is based on the secondary sources of data and it was gathered from various publications of government departments, journals, books, newspapers etc