Not Found Suitable: The Quiet Language of Exclusion

— ✍️ Mohit Nirmender

In India’s constitutional democracy, equality is not a gesture of goodwill but a right guaranteed by law. Yet every year, thousands of applicants and students encounter a quiet phrase in appointment lists and official records: “Not Found Suitable.”It seems harmless, but its repetition across universities and offices shows a pattern. For one employee, that phrase meant waiting three years for a promotion that never arrived.

According to data tabled in Parliament and reported by The Hindu in 2025, more than 80 percent of faculty positions reserved for OBCs, 83 percent for STs, and 64 percent for SCs remain vacant in central universities, while only 39 percent of general category posts are unfilled. The government also admitted that it does not maintain central data on how often the phrase “Not Found Suitable” is used, meaning exclusion is visible everywhere, except in the official record.

Where inequality begins

Exclusion does not begin with job lists; it begins quietly in classrooms. A reply tabled in the Rajya Sabha in November 2024 showed that students from disadvantaged communities drop out of secondary school at rates two to three times higher than the national average. The report listed scholarships and hostel schemes as remedies but said little about what happens inside schools, where inequality starts well before the first exam.

In many classrooms, a child’s surname still travels faster than their report card. It decides where they sit, how they are spoken to, and how much is expected of them. 2020 study by researcher Priyanka Mokale at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences found that in private schools admitting students under the Right to Education Act, teachers often described these children as “slow” or “weak,” not out of hostility but through habit, the quiet language of lowered expectations.

Sociologist Howard Becker described this as labeling: when repeated judgments turn into identities that are hard to escape. Once a child is seen a certain way, that image begins to define them in others’ eyes and sometimes their own. By the time these students reach offices or interviews, the label has already done its work. What began as a classroom remark later returns in a new form: Not Found Suitable.

Universities and the language of merit

On campuses, caste rarely raises its voice, yet everyone hears it. During student elections, campaign jeeps play songs for certain communities, no one says it aloud, but everyone knows who they’re meant for.

In classrooms, a soft question: “What’s your surname?”, does the same quiet work of showing who belongs and who doesn’t.

At one university in Odisha, a lecturer described how these small rituals decide who eats together, who is trusted with administrative work, and who remains invisible. The numbers across India’s campuses only make that daily experience visible in print.

According to The Print (2022), among 45 central universities only one Vice-Chancellor each belonged to the SC and ST categories, while RTI data analysed by The Wire (2024) showed that over 80 percent of IIT-IIM faculty posts remain with general-category candidates despite reservation policy.

Data from Sabrang India (2023) recorded that over 13,600 students from disadvantaged backgrounds dropped out of central universities and elite institutes such as the IITs and IIMs between 2018 and 2023. The data only confirms what daily life on campuses already reveals: opportunity is open to all, but recognition often depends on who already looks “qualified.”

Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called this symbolic capital: the comfort and behaviour that institutions mistake for ability.

Bureaucracy and the pain of evaluation

Equality in India’s Constitution was meant to be protected not only by values but by procedure. Yet inside the country’s bureaucracy, that safeguard often takes another form, one repeated quietly across official files: Not Found Suitable.

Bias in administration rarely appears as intent; it hides in habit. In one department, a senior post stayed vacant until an officer from a dominant community became eligible; it was filled the same month another retired. Everything followed the rulebook, yet the result followed a different order.

Civil-service officer Nethrapal’s public dataset shows how interview marks can quietly reshape entire merit lists. Candidates from marginalised backgrounds often score higher in written exams but lose rank through discretionary scoring. Small variations, repeated over time, build a pattern of exclusion that no single document reveals.

Data tabled in Parliament and reported by The Hindu in 2022 showed that officers from constitutionally protected groups hold only around five percent of Secretary-level posts which is far below the mandated 22.5 percent. The figures reveal continuity, not intent.

Everyday normality of bias

Power in India rarely needs to show its face. It moves through everyday routines in who speaks first, whose work is noticed, and whose efforts quietly fade from view. As Michel Foucault noted, real control rarely needs force; it works best through what feels ordinary. In Indian offices and universities, discrimination often follows this logic: not open hostility, but quiet habit. The bias is rarely intentional, yet it feels natural enough to go unnoticed.

I saw this quiet bias during college as well. A friend initiated an environmental group and asked me to join so that it could be formally registered. The group grew quickly, but when leadership positions were announced, the roles went elsewhere. After graduation, one office-bearer even joked, “Were you really part of this society?” It wasn’t said with malice, just the comfort of forgetting who helped build it.

That small moment carried a larger truth. As Dr. B. R. Ambedkar described, graded inequality creates a system so old that even those within it begin to mistake hierarchy for normalcy. When bias becomes habit, equality turns into paperwork, and recognition depends on who already looks like they belong.

Echoes from history

These small, quiet exclusions whether in classrooms or communities belong to a much older lineage of inequality. In Juthan, writer Omprakash Valmiki recalled being made to sweep the schoolyard because of his birth, not his behaviour. For many students, that story is not distant history. Recent reports still show children cleaning classrooms or washing a teacher’s car. The form has changed, but the message has not.

The logic has merely shifted from social obedience to administrative procedure. The broom has become the file; the old command to stay in one’s place now appears as a polite note: Not Found Suitable.

Coincidence or Design?

When exclusion continues despite reform, it stops looking accidental. It turns into a pattern the system no longer sees. The process looks fairer, yet the outcome hardly changes.

These are not isolated incidents or deliberate acts, but everyday routines that still decide who moves forward and who keeps waiting. What was once said openly now hides inside official language: Not Found Suitable. It sounds procedural, but it quietly determines whose names move ahead and whose files fall behind.

The question, then, is not about fault but about reflection. If the same people continue to face the same closed doors, year after year, can it still be called coincidence? Or have our rules learned to appear fair while repeating the same results?

- The author is an Independent Researcher/Blogger.