'Minority scholarships must be demand-driven'

The parliamentary standing committee on social justice and empowerment has reiterated its recommendation for making the central pre-matric, post-matric and merit-cum-means scholarships for minorities demand-driven. The standing committee, in its 23rd report tabled in the parliament on 22nd December on action taken on its recommendations on demands for grants of ministry of minority affairs (MoMA) for 2015-16, regretted that the union government had not accepted its earlier recommendation in this regard.
The committee noted that from 2014-15, pre-matric and post-matric scholarship schemes became central sector schemes with 100 percent central funding and implemented through the state governments union territory administrations. MoMA disbursed Rs 1129.27 crore for pre-matric scholarships to 74.97 lakh students and Rs 501.28 crore for post-matric scholarships to 9.06 lakh students during 2014-15. The budgetary provision was Rs 1,130 crore for pre-matric scholarships and Rs 598.50 crore for postmatric scholarships.
The committee was informed that though large number of applications are received for both preand postmatric scholarships but all of them are not sanctioned because these schemes are budget-based schemes and not demand-driven ones. The panel noted that the scholarship schemes are important flagship schemes for minority students. These schemes are very popular and in demand by minority students as these not only directly affect their future but also empower them educationally and financially .
For this reason, the committee had earlier recommended that both these schemes should be made demand-driven and applications should not be rejected due to paucity of funds budget.
The committee had also desired that the MoMA take up the matter with the ministry of finance for augmentation of the funds under these schemes, if need be. Further, as less expenditure was incurred in northeastern states under these schemes due to less number of applications received, the committee emphasized the need to sensitive the NE states and their minority students to avail the immense benefits of these schemes.
The committee expressed its unhappiness that the MoMA, in the action taken reply , repeated its stand that the scholarship schemes for minorities have not been approved as demand-based programmes but are budget-based and, therefore, there is very little option for the Ministry to meet the requirements of all applicants.
Since both the schemes are playing important role in motivating minority students for education, the committee once again reiterated that these schemes should be made demand-driven and the ministry of finance should augment the allocations for these schemes. Apart from pre-and post-matric scholarship schemes, the MoMA is also implementing the merit-cum-means scholarship scheme, as a central sector scheme with 100 percent central funding, through the state governments and union territory administrations. As many as 85 institutes for professional and technical courses have been listed for the scheme. The MoMA had released Rs 381.27 crore to 1.38 lakh students under MCM as against the budgetary allocation of Rs 350 crore. While appreciating the overall performance of MCM scheme, he committee noted that though 30 percent of these scholarships are earmarked for girl students, large number of scholarships were awarded to boy students as sufficient number of eligible girl students were not availab e in 13 states and UTs in the last financial year.
The committee felt that education of girl students is as important as educating the boys and hence, MoMA should motivate these states to encourage he girl students to apply for scholarships and avail their full quota of 30 percent allocated to them. The MoMA, however, informed that in the last three years, the percentage of minority girls under MCM scheme had remained above 30 percent, i.e. 35.23 percent in 2012-13, 39.16 percent in 2013-14 and 32.97 percent in 2014-15. The MoMA also posted the gender-wise beneficiaries data for all the scholarship schemes on its website. In all, as many as 85.41 lakh pre-matric, post-matric and merit-cum-means scholarships were awarded to minority students during 2014-15 and total amount of Rs 2,011.93 crore was disbursed to them.
30 percent of all these scholarships are earmarked for girls but the actual number of girl beneficiaries was more than 46 percent. All these scholarships are online and operationalised on National Scholarship Portal (NSP) from July 2015. Direct benefit transfer (DBT) for transfer of scholarships in students' bank accounts has been operationalised. Wherever available, bank accounts are being linked with aadhar. Bank accounts opened under Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana are also being used from 201516 financial year for transfer of prematric scholarship. In the current year (2015-16), MoMA has set target for sanctioning one lakh merit-cum-means scholarships, 9 lakh post-matric scholarships and 75 lakh pre-matric scholarships to minority students for which allocations totaling Rs 1,955.20 crore have been made.
(The author is an MLC and a journalist)