Stymieing them young

Haroon Rashid was in a soup last year when he stopped receiving the monthly instalments of the Maulana Azad National Fellowship (MANF) from the Union Government. The PhD scholar at the Kashmir University could neither pay his hostel fees, nor could send money to his family. With a few other scholars paying for his fare, he could finally travel from Srinagar to Delhi, met the officials of the Ministry of Minority Affairs (MoMA) and managed to get the dues for the previous six months cleared. But he also learnt that he was among the last ones to receive the fellowship as the government had decided to discontinue it.

“This (discontinuation) will discourage thousands of scholars every year,” says Rashid, who has been researching on Shaivism in Kashmir.

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Not only the MANF, but several other schemes, like Padho Pardesh, Nai Udaan and Naya Savera, which were launched to encourage students of the minority communities, have been discontinued by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government over the past few months.

The Padho Pardesh scheme provided interest subsidies on educational loans taken by students of minority communities for studying abroad. The Nai Udaan provided support to minority students, who cleared prelims conducted by the UPSC, SSC and other state public service commissions. The Nai Savera provided free coaching to students of minority communities.

The scope of the pre-matric scholarship scheme of the MoMA has also been narrowed down to cover only the students of classes IX and X, leaving out the ones in classes I to VIII. The government argued that enrolment of students from minority communities was at par with the national average at the primary and the elementary levels and the students at these levels were already covered under the Right to Education Act.

There was a need to harmonize the coverage under Pre-Matric Scholarship Scheme for minorities with similar schemes implemented for other target groups like the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and the OBCs. That is why students in classes I-VIII have been excluded from the coverage of the pre-matric scholarship scheme, so that the government can focus more on the education of children from minority communities, especially girls, at higher classes which would generate better employment opportunities for them, a MoMA official told a parliamentary panel.

The scopes of the pre-matric scholarship schemes offered by the union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment and the Ministry of Tribal Affairs for the SCs and the OBCs as well as the STs have also been limited to the Class IX and X students.

Also Read: The insidiousness of scrapping Maulana Azad National Fellowship

Harish S Wankhede, who teaches at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, says that while the government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been candid on its policies on Muslims, the curtailing of the schemes for the SCs, the STs and the OBCs is surprising, since the party has built votebanks among the communities on the basis of its welfare promises. “The BJP is willing to use welfarism as a political rhetoric, but not concerned about the policy framework of welfare,” he adds.

The government’s move to discontinue the schemes and to narrow their scopes came even as over 19000 students of the SC, ST and OBC communities dropped out from the central universities, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs).

“The dreams of Muslims, Dalits and the marginalised for education are being shattered,” Shamshul Islam, a former professor of Delhi University, says. “The SC/ST component plan has been slashed in the last few budgets and it clearly points at shrinking of the welfare schemes for the marginalised communities.”