Assessment of Higher Education Among the Scheduled Castes in Jalpaiguri District West Bengal a Geographical Study

Abstract

The scheduled castes who have been historically denied access to educational institutions newlineare still struggling to match their upper-caste Hindu counterparts in the sphere of higher newlineeducation. They are lagging upper-caste Hindu counterparts in terms of gross enrolment newlineratio (GER), performance and studying few of the highly demanding and job-oriented newlineprogrammes in higher education in the country. Further, within the SC category a newlinesignificant and even more pronounced intra-caste disparity is being noted taking into newlineaccount GER, performances and other important aspects of higher education. Several newlinecastes from this category are deprived of the opportunity to make an adequate utilization newlineof the beneficiary facilities meant for them by the government thus remain backward in newlinehigher education. Such intra-caste disparity and highly disadvantaged positions for a few newlineof the castes in higher education in West Bengal hardly received broad scholarly attention newlinedespite having remarkable social, economic and political implications. Due to the paucity newlineof literature on the relevant issue, conducting scientific research on the taken issue was newlinequite challenging to the researcher. However, it was expected to be a worthwhile scientific newlinecontribution to learn the underlying reasons for heterogeneous progress in higher newlineeducation among the scheduled castes. Besides, the study was also likely to contribute the newlineunderstanding of major constraints and impediments among the disadvantaged scheduled newlinecastes to their achievement of higher education for policy implications. newlineGiven this background, the following specific objectives were placed before the research: newline(i) to study the levels and programmes of higher education of the scheduled castes in newlineJalpaiguri district (ii) to analyze the performances of the scheduled castes in programmes newlineof higher education (iii) to examine the effectiveness of the beneficiary facilities in the newlinecontext of higher education of the scheduled castes of the study area (iv) to examine the newlinenature of difficulties in higher