The refusal of the Narendra Modi government to increase fellowship amount in four years has forced scholars across centrally-funded institutions such as the IITs, IISc, NITs or the IISERs to launch protests.
According to a Times of India report, the last revision, a hike of 56 per cent was in 2014 under the then Human Resources Development Minister Smriti Irani. The scholars are protesting since September 2018 citing rising costs. The irregular disbursement of the fellowship further makes it difficult for the protesters to make ends meet as they have to support their families too, the report added.
Nikhil Gupta, national representative and coordinator of the movement and a research fellow at the Centre of Biomedical Research, Lucknow spoke to TOI on the issue. “Several meetings and frequent rounds of government offices haven’t yielded any results. We researchers have no option but to keep going to the ministry and UGC. We have visited MHRD at least 10 times but even that didn’t work out,” he said.
Reacting to the protests, Communist Party of India (Marxist) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury said that scholarship to deserving students is “high on the hit-list of the BJP-RSS”. “Education is debased to prevent social mobility it offers,” he added.
Scholarship to deserving students is high on the hit-list of the RSS-BJP. They want to stall genuine questioning, made possible by our youth being encouraged to read and write. Education is debased to prevent social mobility it offers. pic.twitter.com/orhLNbIjDf
— Sitaram Yechury (@SitaramYechury) December 25, 2018
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