“Opinion | Why The UGC’s Equity Regulations Are A Dangerous Overreach”, News 18, January 21, 2026
“The University Grants Commission’s Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions Regulations, 2026, notified on 13 January, arrives at a deeply ironic moment. Globally, the once-celebrated experiment with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is visibly collapsing. Yet India’s apex higher education regulator has chosen precisely this juncture to import its logic wholesale into Indian campuses.
The regulations mandate an elaborate bureaucratic apparatus:
Equal Opportunity Centres, Equity Committees chaired by vice-chancellors with reserved. representation, 24/7 helplines, mobile “Equity Squads” patrolling campuses, demographic audits, and Equity Ambassadors in every department and hostel. Framed as a decisive intervention against caste discrimination faced by SCs, STs and OBCs, with loose gestures towards gender, religion and disability, the intent appears noble. The design, however, is deeply troubling.
What the UGC has proposed is not a modest reform but a sweeping ideological infrastructure closely mirroring Western DEI frameworks. These models promised inclusion but delivered polarisation, litigation and institutional paralysis. India is now at risk of importing a failed export at precisely the wrong moment……”
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