Education is one of the most potential variables and relates to different indicators of socio-economic development. Going beyond the campaign for universal literacy, which is otherwise supported by constitutional and statutory provisions, the article seeks to explore the presence as well as the dominance of Scheduled Castes (SC) in Higher Education and gets into the paradoxes of social and bureaucratic structures that facilitate or impede SC entry to and continue with higher education. At this juncture, it seems to be imperative to search for an alignment between constitutional mandates on one hand and social and bureaucratic constraints on the other. Moreover, the relevant methodological framework has been adopted to put facts and figures into perspective, to identify the reason for their slow progress in higher education and to locate the reasons why the reservation policy failed to assist them as per the expectations of the founding fathers of the constitution.
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