The concept of exclusion essentially means a systematic process by which the disadvantaged and unprivileged groups are partially or entirely excluded from various opportunities which they should be given on equal terms with the advantaged and privileged. Social exclusion programmes have been established as part of the curriculum of dominant disciplines in the so-called mainstream academic institutions which vowed to provide expert knowledge to meet the challenges of de-institutionalisation of social exclusionary measures pursued by the state. Nevertheless, this knowledge is important as exclusion from academia itself is contributing in ratifying exclusion. Within an institutionalised and formal pedagogical setup, it is therefore needed to record the lived experiences of the aboriginal communities and document how they deal with their shared premise of educational development. Active form of exclusion is very common in the academia where the indigenous people are systematically denied participation despite fulfilling all the eligibility criteria and instead favouring the privileged sections despite being under qualified. Here discrimination automatically leads to deprivation and gradually this deprivation gets institutionalised. On the other hand, passive form of exclusion includes discouraging, underestimating and demeaning the indigenous people which lead to under performance, poor academic scores and failures in getting jobs in future. There are other routes to social exclusion in academia, for example, the indigenous people are deprived of getting financial help, substantial time for studying and even access to education. Another complex concept is adverse inclusion by which it means to include the indigenous students, directly or indirectly, in an unfairly manner. It results into a higher rate of dropouts, illiteracy and general disempowerment of the indigenous communities. It is also related to the human rights of the victims of discrimination. To prevent such actions and prohibit untouchability, the government has enacted Untouchability (Offences) Act, 1955 which later was renamed as Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1976. But the indigeneity was further institutionalised with a more specific act called the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 amended in 2015. Adverse inclusion in an indirect manner gets intensified when the government policies very tactfully exclude the tribals from getting their fair share of means of livelihood in the name of ‘eminent domain’. The passive discrimination is not always bad, as it gets institutionalised in the higher education institutions with the quota system by which tribal students can be admitted against a particular number of seats and also apply for jobs strictly reserved for them. The policy of reservation and welfare measures exclusively meant for the indigenous people to safeguard their interests is thereby called protective or positive discrimination. Although they are given concessions and favours, political, economic or educational, they are comprehensive and aimed at all-round development of the marginalised people so that the gap between the indigenous and non-indigenous can be wind down. So, protective or positive discrimination is an instrument of diminishing discrimination. But the affirmative action in the form of reservation has to be successful, only then the indigenous people will have access to good education. It has been found in many studies that the reserved quotas remain vacant due to the want of eligible candidates. This process of institutionalising the academia has some serious drawbacks which do not let the indigenous children educate the way they are comfortable in. The non-indigenous modes of education seem to them alien as it has virtually no connection with indigenous knowledge system and indigenous pedagogy. The non-indigenous academia has been in a way imposed from above where the tribal students have been inducted, not inculcated. They were convinced that if they perform well in this alien system they could get financial aid of the government, in the form of mid-day meal or scholarships. The non-indigenous education system has not tried to instil the idea of indigeneity into the students who originally belong to the indigenous community and made them sceptical about the whole idea of tribal education in a non-tribal institution. It creates a division among the indigenous communities where the ‘modern intellectual’ tribals who have been educated in the institutionalised method form a privileged section. This has been the reason why the educational growth is not satisfactory as expected when various schemes are launched.