By Abu Saleh for Twocircles.net
Ever since the Narendra Modi government has taken charge, the students of this country have been in great trouble. It’s not just because of the widely discussed issues like suicide of Rohith Vemula at UoH and the incarceration of Kanhaiya Kumar and his friends at JNU. Apart from these well publicised instances of regime-backed atrocities, a major issue that has been troubling the student community for a long time now has been the cuts in education budget and the delays in fellowship.
The debates regarding UGC Non Net Fellowship and UGC’s messing up with it is well known. After several protests throughout the country, the HRD Ministry did set up a committee. The report of the committee was supposed to come in December but researchers are still waiting for the same.
Further, many ongoing fellowship schemes are also in great danger since many of them are being mismanaged in the last two years. The late disbursement system and several months without any fellowships are plaguing the students.
Fellowship schemes like Maulana Azad National Fellowship (MANF) and the Rajiv Gandhi National Fellowship (RGNF) have been dysfunctional for a long time. Last year, some students did visit the UGC and other concerned ministries and were promised that the schemes will run as per law thenceforth, but they remained mere promises. As of now, thousands of scholars in the country have not received their fellowship for many months. For example, scholars under the MANF scheme for minority students have been without fellowship since last October. Other schemes, like the RGNF SC, RGNF ST and the RGNF OBC are also late. The worst-hit have been the physically-challenged students, who have not received fellowship since last July. In these circumstances, research scholars are in great distress.
It is important to point out that most scholars solely depend on fellowship for their needs. Thus, if the fellowship amount is not credited on time, it becomes very difficult to sustain. Instead of focussing on their research, the students spend a substantial amount of time petitioning every month, for what they rightfully deserve as legal entitlements.
Who do we blame? Is the assigned Canara Bank responsible for this? Is it the bureaucracy of UGC responsible? Or is the government?
This is an appeal to stop punishing the students for choosing a career in academics. It must be pointed out that one of the significant reasons mentioned by Rohith Vemula in the tract going around as his ‘suicide note’ for his fatal decision was monetary problems. His pending fellowship was disbursed only after his death. We would like to ask the Ministries, the UGC and the other powers that be whether they want mass suicides to occur across educational campuses of the country.
This is also a request to the concerned authorities at UGC, the various ministries involved and the power holders at the government to look into the situation and do the needful at the earliest to resolve the late disbursement of our fellowships.
The author is a PhD Research Scholar at the Centre for Comparative Literature (CCL), School of Humanities, University of Hyderabad (UoH) and is a part of the UGC Fellowship Forum (https://www.facebook.com/groups/manfcandidates/?fref=ts ) a social media platform for UGC scholars from all over the country.